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V- 






THE LIFE AND LETTERS 

OF 

GEORGE BANCROFT 



THE LIFE AND LETTERS 



OF 



GEORGE BANCROFT 



BY 



M. A. DeAVOLFE HOWE 



ILLUSTRATED 



Volume I 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1908 



^34 



'T^ 



UBfrABY of congress] 
Tv/c C; .:ies Received 

APH iO 1S08 

20 3 






.iiAu, fto. 



Copyright 1908. by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

Published April, 1908 




PREFACE 

About five years ago the late Mrs. John C. Bancroft 
entrusted to me the private papers of her father-in-law 
that I might prepare the biography now presented. 
They were so numerous that the task of drawing forth 
from the mass of written words some semblance of the 
man whom they concerned seemed at first to offer 
nothing but difficulties. Yet it soon appeared that Mr. 
Bancroft himself had done much to simplify his biogra- 
pher's work. The correspondence was, for the most 
part, well arranged; and, best of all, I found that Mr. 
Bancroft had secured many of his own early letters from 
their recipients, and had followed the practice of pre- 
serving copies of most of the letters written during his 
active life. When the source of manuscript material 
in the following pages is not specifically noted, it may 
therefore be understood to lie in the papers placed at 
my disposal. 

In one of the multitude of letters not used, I find Mr. 
Bancroft exclaiming, "Oh! these children and biog- 
raphers who cannot leave in the dark what belongs 
there." What does belong there, and what does not? 



vi PREFACE 

These are questions which the biographer must take the 
responsibihty of answering with that uncompromising 
finahty which an architect uses in building a house. No 
two architects, or biographers, confronted with the same 
problem, can rear precisely the same structure. Here 
the problem has been one of selection and elimination 
rather than search. If I have not always ehminated 
enough. It has been through a desire to shed authentic 
light upon a character not without its contradictions 
Where interpretation and comment have been called 
for, I can only hope they have been given with the 
sympathetic candour which should exist between a 
biographer and his subject. 

For counsel and other assistance of great variety and 
value I am indebted to many friends and kinsmen of 
Mr. Bancroft, and to certain friends of my own. Special 
acknowledgments must be made to Professor Wilder 
D. Bancroft and Mr. Charles Bruen Perkins; to the 
Hon. John Bigelow, Mr. Charles K. Bolton of the 
Boston AthencTum, Mr. Andrew McFarland Davis, Mrs 
J. C. Bancroft Davis, Mr. Wilberforce Eames of the 
New, York Public Library (Lenox Branch), Mr 
Worthmgton C. Ford of the Library of Congress, the 
Kev. Dr. Edward Everett Hale, Professor Albert 
Bushnell Hart, Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson 
Dr James K. Hosmer, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mr.' 
Wilham C. Lane of the Harvard College Library, the 
Hon. Heniy Cabot Lodge, Mrs. Thornton K. Lothrop 
Mr. Leonard L. Mackall,Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, Pro- 



PREFACE ^" 

fessor Charles Eliot Norton, Professor and Mrs. Henry 
G Pearson, the late Mr. Linzee Prescott, Mr. Josiah P. 
Quincy Dr. Austin Scott, Professor W. M. Sloane, Mr. 
Ainsworth R. Spofford of the Library of Congress, and 
Mr George G. Wolkins. That Mrs. John C. Bancroft, 
under whose friendly guidance the work was begun, 
has not lived to see its completion, is a source of the 
deepest regret. 



Boston, February, 1908. 



CONTENTS 

V 

Preface 

PAGE 

I. Inheritance and Boyhood. 1800-1813 1 

11. Preparation at Home and Abroad. 

1813-1822 2^ 

III. The Period of Teaching. 1822-1831 155 

IV. Politics and History. 1831-1845 . 185 
V. Secretary of the Navy. 1845-1846 . 262 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



George Bancroft Frontispiece 

From the portrait by Gustav Richter at Harvard Uni- 
versity. 

FACING PAGE 

Aaron Bancroft, Father of George Ban- 
croft 16 

From a miniature in the possession of Professor Wilder 
D. Bancroft. 

LucRETiA Bancroft, Mother of George Ban- 
croft 20 

From a miniature in the possession of Mr. Andrew 
McFarland Davis. 



INHERITANCE AND BOYHOOD 

1800—1813 

"You have both written the History of your Country, 
and made yourself a part of it." These words from a 
letter of Robert C. Winthrop to George Bancroft on 
his ninetieth birthday could not have been addressed 
so truthfully to any other American. They summarise 
a unique career. The work and the life of George 
Bancroft taken together cover virtually the entire range 
of American history. His books are the record, from 
the very beginnings, of all the events which culminated 
in the inauguration of the first President, only eleven 
years before the birth of the nineteenth century. With 
that century the life of George Bancroft began, and 
continued through all but nine of its years. His life 
was one of many contacts with the most important 
persons and events of his time, both in America and in 
Europe. It was a life which rendered him peculiarly 
a national figure. The writer and the statesman, how- 
ever, were not all of the man. In the full consideration 
of his career must be included his social relations, 
coloured by his strongly marked personal character- 
istics, and finally helping to determine the view in which 

1 



2 GEORGE BANCROFT [I8OO-I813 

the succeeding generations have held him. It is not 
difficult to find in his inheritance and early influences 
the seeds of his development in various directions. 

George Bancroft was born at Worcester, Massachu- 
setts, October 3, 1800. Instead of tracing all the de- 
grees by which his substantial New England ancestry 
transmitted to him its characteristics, it will suffice to 
look with some care at his father and mother and the 
special inheritances with which they could provide their 
children. 

His father was the Rev. Aaron Bancroft, who was 
born at Reading, Massachusetts, November 10, 1755, 
and died at Worcester, August 19, 1839. The stock 
from which he sprang was of that New England strain 
which has so often been called "sturdy" and "pious," 
that one forgets how much the words may mean. 
Aaron Bancroft's father. Deacon Samuel Bancroft, a 
farmer of Reading, was a member of the ecclesiastical 
council which in 1750 decreed the dismissal of Jonathan 
Edwards from Northampton, but — be it added — was 
one of the minority which formally protested against 
the decree. A correspondent of George Bancroft in 
1845 drew his attention to the fact that Samuel Bancroft, 
in virtue of his title of Deacon "and of his civil rank and 
standing, wore the large white wig of that day." 
Samuel Bancroft's grandfather, Thomas Bancroft of 
Reading, also a Deacon, left a will, from one clause of 
which it may be inferred that both George Bancroft and 
his father came by a clear inheritance into the interests 
to which their lives were devoted: "My history books 
to be divided among my three sons equally, my divinity 



1800-1813] INHERITANCE AND BOYHOOD 3 

books among all my children, not including my bible, 
Clark's annotations, which I give to my son Thomas." 
The father of this testator was a still earlier Thomas 
Bancroft, born in England in 1622, and first placed 
with definiteness in New England through his two 
marriages in Dedham in 1G47 and 1648. Soon after 
the second marriage he moved to Reading, where, as 
we have seen, his descendants long remained. 

The agricultural life at Reading, in which Aaron 
Bancroft would naturally have succeeded his father, 
did not satisfy the boy. He was permitted to enter 
Harvard College in 1774. The entire college genera- 
tion to which he belonged suffered serious interruptions 
of study through the War of the Revolution. Yet in 
1778 Bancroft graduated with honor. In 1810 his 
college made him a Doctor of Divinity. To this dis- 
tinction he had risen by steady degrees. Unsuccessful 
as a teacher immediately upon leaving college, he went, 
after a brief study of theology, to Nova Scotia where for 
three years he preached in various places. In the 
"Memoranda designed for the Inspection of my Wife 
and my Children," which Aaron Bancroft wrote in 1826, 
he said of this missionary experience: "I am fully per- 
suaded that this peregrination was of solid benefit to 
me. It put me on my own resources, and obliged me 
to call into exercise the powers of my own mind in a 
greater degree than I probably should in a state where 
libraries and learned clergymen would have presented 
extraneous assistance." All this must have contributed 
to the independence of judgment which characterised 
him through life. As a mere boy he had rebelled against 



4 GEORGE BANCROFT [isoo-i8i3 

the Calvinism which enveloped his father's house. "I 
am not sure," he wrote in the "Memoranda," "that the 
surfeit I then had did not give me a distaste to Calvin- 
ism which has continued to this day." On his return 
from Nova Scotia his theology was such that the town 
of Worcester refused to establish him as the successor 
of the congregational minister whose death had left 
a place to be filled. But the welcome which Aaron 
Bancroft's frankly Arminian preaching received gave 
evidence that there was room in Worcester for a second 
religious society. Accordingly in 1785 a new parish 
was established, and in 1786 Bancroft was formally or- 
dained its minister. Though the definite rupture be- 
tween the Orthodox and Unitarian ministers did not 
come till the nineteenth century was well begun, the 
young Arminian found himself held at arm's length by 
the surrounding clergy. How he bore himself may be 
inferred from a postscript to the "Memoranda": "An 
honest, but not very intelligent farmer of my Parish, 
some ten years since, accosted me in this manner, 'Well, 
Mr. Bancroft, what do you think the people of the old 
Parish say of you now?' I answered, 'I hope some- 
thing very good.' 'They say, if we find fault with him, 
he does not mind it at all; and if we praise him, he 
does not mind it; but keeps steadily on his own way; 
we therefore have concluded that it is best to let him 
alone.' The farmer mentioned the fact as a subject 
of laughter, but I thought and still think that taking 
the declaration in its bearings, it was the prettiest 
compliment I have received through my whole life." 
Another passage from the " INIemoranda" illustrates a 



1800-1813] INHERITANCE AND BOYHOOD 5 

quality of reserve characteristic of the race to which the 
Bancrofts belonged: "In the above sketch nothing is 
said of experimental religion or of offices of secret de- 
votion. At this my children perhaps will be surprised. 
Possibly in these things I have been through life too 
reserved ; but my heart always revolted from communi- 
cations of this nature. Religion, as a concern between 
God and the soul of man, is in its essence a secret 
transaction, and not to be spoken of to the world. Be 
my views on this subject right or wrong, the fact is, I 
never furnished either my wife or my children with 
means by which they could determine what was my 
private communion with Heaven. Whether my gen- 
eral life and conversation have supported my Christian 
profession and my ministerial character, my family, as 
well as those around me, will judge." 

Outside his own community he was well known as an 
early leader in the anti-Calvinistic branch of New 
England Congregationalism, From the founding of 
the American Unitarian Association in 1825 until 1836 
he was its president. More than thirty of his separate 
discourses may be found in pamphlet form. A pub- 
lished volume of his "Sermons on those Questions of the 
Gospel, and on those Constituent Principles of the 
Church, which Christian Professors have made the 
Subject of Controversy'' (1822), had the power to call 
forth from the elder President Adams, naturally sym- 
pathising with the new Unitarian movement, a letter 
in which two sentences read: "It is a chain of dia- 
monds set in links of gold. I have never read, nor heard 
read, a volume of sermons better calculated and adapted 



6 GEORGE BANCROFT [I800-I813 

to the age and country In which it was written," Of 
all his writings, however, his Life of Washington (1807) 
carried his good name farthest. The preface declares 
it to be a book not written "for men of erudition, but 
for the unlettered portion of the community," The 
author "entertains no expectation of acquiring literary 
fame by this publication; but he hopes to escape the 
disgrace of having written an useless book," The 
effective simplicity of its style clearly saved the author 
from this disgrace, and carried the book into several 
editions, in both England and America. 

A son's estimate of a father may not be taken as the 
most impartial testimony; but since the father is here 
regarded chiefly in the light of what his son derived 
from him, it is well to reproduce a letter written by 
George Bancroft to the compiler of the Annals of the 
American Pulpit, who included a sketch of Aaron Ban- 
croft in his eighth volume (18G5): 

To William B. Sprague, D.D. 

"New York, Januanj 28, 1862, 

"You ask of me some personal account of my father. 
My earliest recollections of him are of a bright and 
cheerful man; fulfilling the duties of life with courage 
and hearty goodwill; naturally given to hospitality, 
and delighting in the society of intelligent friends, who 
were attracted by the ready sympathy of his nature, his 
lively and varied conversation, and the quickness and 
clearness of his perceptions. His mind was calm and 
logical, discriminating and accurate, possessing the 



1800-1813] INHERITANCE AND BOYHOOD 7 

reflective powers in an eminent degree. He loved 
literature and its pursuits; and though, in his youth, the 
opportunities of becoming learned were interrupted by 
the War, his natural inclinations and activity made 
amends for the deficiency; so that in general culture he 
stood among the foremost of his day, and, far more than 
any man in his neighbourhood, preserved through life 
the tastes of a scholar. Of a bilious temperament and a 
delicate physical organization, he used to speak of him- 
self as having been irascible in his boyhood; but this 
tendency he brought under subjection, without im- 
pairing his vivacity, and he obtained and preserved to 
the last a complete mastery over himself. 

" It never was his way to make a show of his virtues or 
his emotions. With him private devotion was strictly 
private. His affections were strong, but not demonstra- 
tive. One of his sons was lost at sea; though suffering 
most keenly from sorrow, he maintained his fortitude 
as an example to his family; but long after every one 
else had given up hope, he was always seen, with the 
arrival of the mail, walking in front of the post-office 
until the letters were distributed; and when day after 
day brought none to him, he would return to his study 
with undisturbed serenity, unquestioning and unques- 
tioned. In all this prolonged period of sorrow and 
hope, he was never found in tears but once, when his 
door was suddenly and unexpectedly opened. His 
love for his wife, or rather their mutual affection, 
was singularly great. She was remarkable for 
benevolence, very uncommon gifts of mind, and 
playful cheerfulness. In April, 1839, when they had 



8 GEORGE BANCROFT [I8OO-I813 

been married more than fifty-two years, she died after 
a very short ilhiess. My father, then past eighty-three 
years of age, attended her to the grave with no unusual 
display of grief; but, after returning from the funeral, 
he never left his homestead again, and died in less than 
four months. 

" Throughout all his life, my father's means were lim- 
ited, and during a large part of it, were very scanty; 
but he was never embarrassed, for he had made it a fixed 
rule not to incur debt. Small as was his income, he 
took it upon himself to support his widowed mother in 
comfort; and under his care she lived to be ninety- 
eight.^ 

" His knowledge of human nature and the springs of 
human action made him sought for by those who needed 
consolation and advice; and he was frequently ap- 
pealed to as an arbiter. His exactness and method 
made him a good man of business, and once, when cir- 
cumstances compelled him to act as the administrator 
of a very complicated estate, he did it so well that he 
won the gratitude of all persons concerned. In politics 
he was a Federalist of the old school, from which he 
never deviated a hand's breadth; and had he lived a 
hundred years he would have been a Federalist to the 
last. But what he was most remarkable for was, that, 
while his own opinions were held with tenacity, and 
while he was often unavoidably engaged in theological 

* " It was in the simplicity and economy of a minister's family, 
in what you see was a Dissenting Church in an Established 
community, that our George Bancroft grew up. It was plain 
living and high thinking with a vengeance." From letter of 
Rev. Dr. Edward Everett Hale to the author, Jan. 20, 1906. 



1800-1813] INHERITANCE AND BOYHOOD 9 

polemics, he maintained a steady, consistent attach- 
ment to freedom of conscience and of thought, the 
right of free inquiry, the right of private judgment. In 
this I think nobody ever excelled him. It seemed to 
form an elemental part of him. Whenever members of 
his family consulted him on a question of belief, he 
never taught them by his own authority, but would set 
before them arguments on each side, and recommended 
to them the best writers on the subject; he really 
wished them to arrive at their own conclusions by their 
own unbiased reflection. This respect for private 
judgment he carried into all departments; and I can- 
not recall a single instance in which he attempted to 
mould or sway my opinions on religious dogmas or 
politics. The candid and impartial exercise of the facul- 
ties of the mind, a teachable temper, and honest zeal for 
truth, formed his rule for himself and for all others.* 

" His father, who was a leading man in his village, and 
remarkable for his gifts as a speaker, was known as a 
strict Calvinist, and a thorough supporter of Jonathan 
Edwards. So my father was trained in his boyhood 
in the straitest school of orthodoxy; but 'the throes 
of his own youthful mind,' as he used to say, revolted 

^ At the end of the sermon on Dr. Bancroft's death, preached 
by the Rev. Alonzo Hill, his colleague and successor, it is told 
that when the contest between the "Liberal Christian" and 
"Orthodox" parties was at its height "one of Aaron Bancroft's 
daughters asked leave to read Dr. Channing's letters to Dr. 
Worcester. 'And have you read Dr. Worcester's Letters?' 
inquired he. As she answered, "No," with some expression of 
disparagement — 'What,' said he, with considerable warmth, 'are 
you a daughter of mine, and do you read only one side of the 
question? ' " 



10 GEORGE BANCROFT [I800-I813 

against the dogmas of predestination and election. His 
position in the theological world was further affected 
by his encountering, early in life, in a distant region, 
ignorant and presumptuous religious enthusiasts. These 
circumstances and his characteristic antipathy to all 
exaggeration, and his distrust of the effects of excite- 
ments, set him against fanaticism and excess in all their 
forms. 

"My father's theology was of New England origin, 
and, like that of so many others, was a logical conse- 
quence of the reaction against the severities of our 
Puritan fathers. He was thoroughly a Protestant and 
a Congregationalist. Of English theological writers, he 
was fond of reading, among others, Tillotson, Samuel 
Clarke, Price, Bishop Butler, the liberal Bishop Law, 
the philosopher Locke. He had no sympathy with 
Belsham or his school, and read little or nothing of 
theirs till late in life. For several years he was a sub- 
scriber to the Christian Observer, while it was an 
English Low Church periodical. He always remem- 
bered with pleasure that, happening to sojourn for a 
time in a town where there was but one building for 
public worship, he and an Episcopal minister conducted 
the service alternately in perfect harmony. The 
division in the Congregational Church in Massachu- 
setts he deplored and resisted. It met his cordial ap- 
proval that his children should attend the services of a 
Calvinistic minister, where there was no other Congre- 
gationalist. Once he commended one of them by 
letter to a Calvinistic Church in another town, as a 
church-member in regular standing; and when one of 



1800-1813] INHERITANCE AND BOYHOOD U 

his daughters married a Calvinist, he advised her to 
worship at the same church with her husband. He 
considered reason as a primary and universal revelation 
of God to men of all nations and all ages; he was sure 
of- the necessary harmony between reason and true reli- 
gion, and he did not scruple to reject whatever seemed 
to him plainly in contradiction with it. 

"Age may have impaired his vivacity; but his last 
years were serene; and whenever it was discussed 
whether a man would like to live his life over again, my 
father always expressed himself so well satisfied with 
his career that he would willingly run it once more. 

" He took little heed of what men said of him, whether 
in blame or in praise, but steadily went on his way with 
undeviating constancy, firmness, and good temper. 
His theological opponents, as well as his nearer friends, 
bore testimony to his uprightness; and his character 
gained for him, among all classes of the community in 
which he lived, a solid influence and respect such as I 
have never known exceeded; indeed, I think I may say 
that it has not been equalled." 

There is in this letter a passing glimpse of George 
Bancroft's mother. Among the papers which he 
preserved are letters in her unskilful handwriting, full 
of strange misspellings, yet more noticeable still for 
warmth of feeling and a spontaneous play of humour. 
They help one to believe that Aaron Bancroft's wife, 
Lucretia Chandler, was the remarkable woman her 
disting-uished son considered her. She was indeed of 
no common ancestry. Her mother, Mary Church, of 



12 GEORGE BANCROFT [isoo-1813 

Bristol, Rhode Island, was a grand-daughter of Captain 

Benjamin Church, the conqueror of King Philip and 

chronicler of the Indian Wars. Through her father's 

mother, Hannah Gardiner, she was descended from the 

picturesque race of Gardiners, who for generations 

held Gardiner's Island, opposite New London, in entail. 

Lucretia Chandler's father, John Chandler, was the 

fifth of his line in New England, the fourth to bear the 

name of John, the third in Worcester County to hold, 

besides, the title of Judge. Like his grandfather and 

father, he filled various offices of importance in the 

provincial government of Massachusetts. The family 

was conspicious for wealth and social place. When the 

Revolution drew near, Mrs. Bancroft's father, known 

in Worcester as "Tory John," fled to Boston, At the 

evacuation he sailed with his fellow Tories for Halifax 

and thence to London, where he died in 1800. In 

England his claims for reimbursement for his property 

losses through the Revolution were so modest as to win 

him the title of "the honest refugee." 

Lucretia Chandler was but eleven years old in 1776. 
Had her father been of the patriot party, her prepara- 
tion for life would surely have taken a more prosperous 
course. There is fortunately preserved a letter^ of 
her own which explains so many circumstances and 
reveals her nature so plainly that there can be no better 
way to picture the mother of George Bancroft than by 
reproducing a large portion of it. The letter was 
written to lier daughter Jane, who in 1825 married 

'See Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Societij, An- 
nual Meeting, October 24, 1900. 



1800-1813] INHERITANCE AND BOYHOOD 13 

Donato Gherardi, an Italian political refugee, and in 
1827 sailed with him and the first two of their five chil- 
dren for Louisiana. 

"Worcester, February 28th [1828]. 

"... Sometimes I wonder how your father ever 
could have thought of a young girl like me for his wife — 
one who was almost a child of nature — unfortunate in 
being bred without the least culture of the mind. My 
mother, a woman of a strong understanding, would often 
strive to turn my attention to reading and as often point 
out the importance of spending my time usefully; not 
having an early good school education, the groundwork 
was not laid. I cair'd not for history, nor did I read 
much of Travels. I could form no idea where the place 
was nor co'ld I imagin that such people as I read of ever 
existed, so what was the result, I read novels to a won- 
derful extent, I took pleasure in a good play, and found 
delight in reading blank virce. Your Uncle Sever^ 
read beautifully, and he would often hear me read, 
which was of high consiquence but as to my knowing 
anything that is now consider'd an English Educa- 
tion I am sure it was all as out of the question. I 
possessed a cheerful disposition — and my mother would 
sometimes tell me in a plaiful manner, I should never 
have more at my heart than I should throw off at my 
heels — I was always ready for any amusement, the War 
we had with England did not forbid mirth, that seem'd 
to be the only way to go on. I was the gayest in the 

' Lucretia Chandler's sister Mary married William Seaver, Jr. 
{The Chandler Family, by George Chandler, Boston, 1872). 



14 GEORGE BANCROFT [1800-1813 

ball room. I never wanted more attention than I 
received. Sometimes my pride wd have a good lesson 
for I could not dress like many of my young acquaint- 
ances. Altho born in the lap of plenty, and constantly 
more carest than fathers generally do their children, 
when so numerous a family as he had would not expect 
it, but the truth was I was my mother's eleventh child, 
and nearly three years elapsed before the twelfth came. 
I was as my mother had said, a pretty little black eyed 
Indian, as they called me, remarked for my upright 
form, which gave me the name, and till the war broke 
out which was when I was in my ninth year, I was even 
then the plaything of the family, indulged by my father. 
He never sit in his chair without calling for *pug' to 
come to him. I sat while he smoak'd his pipe. I can 
even now see him go and take his glass of wine, and 
away to his office, happy indeed were those days, the 
poor and the afflicted always found a reffuge in my 
parents, if I possess one attum of benivolence or even 
feal for the sorrowful, it was from these early impres- 
sions, but alias they were too short, grievous times 
came, my father not willing to live in altercation with 
those around him, a very few indeed of the number who 
had not by his bounty and by his kind interfearance as- 
sisted in the daily walks of life, or aforded them such 
means as to enable them to get a living, it was these 
very men who were the most bitter, and from such men 
he thot it best for a while to abscond — our most con- 
fidential men laiborers was let into the seacret, and my 
father went to Boston, these men having all the plate, 
hnnin and library under their care, this was indeed 



1800-1813] INHERITANCE AND BOYHOOD 15 

afflictive, but not all — this was the work of man. My 
mother was to be tried more, the very next winter was 
the most painful, for in that winter two fine sons were 
drowned/ You have often heard me speak of them — 
they were two and four years older than myself — this 
loss my mother moarned the rest of her days. The next 
summer everything was stript and torn from us. . . . 
Economy was the grand order, but my mother could not 
willingly give up her former appearance, her society 
was courted, all who had ever known her was desirous 
of her acquaintance. Wliile her furnature was sold 
in her own house, and the very chair on which she sat, 
bid of from her purchase. She bore it well, and never 
put herself down by losing her dignity. All this was 
hard, but the hardest was to come. We had to loose 
this mother. After strugling thro these times of deep 
distress, the war closed, a fair prospect was before us 
that we should be happy, but a violent feaver overtook 
this frail body, she had not strength to overcome the 
diseas. . . . Your Aunt Sever and I took the family. 
. . . She was then [after two years] married. I could 
no more visit her than if I was a mother of a family. 
. . . Your father had become our minister. I was 
pleased with him and while our affairs was in this 
poverty struck state, I might, or I might not be your 
father's wife. I had been tried in so many ways. I 
found there was no certainty in riches, trouble would 
come and it might be softened by the quiet life I might 

* December 16, 1775, Benjamin and Francis Chandler, four- 
teen and twelve years old, were drowned while skating. {The 
Chandler Family.) 



16 GEORGE BANCROFT [I8OO-I813 

leed with a clergeman — much to the disappointment of 
my brothers they thought I could find some one to 
give me a better Uving, and was very desireous to have 
me give it up. It is not easy for a young girl to give up 
an object where she considers her highest happiness 
depends, at the same moment let me be understood I 
had no property nor was it known that there ever would 
be any. Even my mother's thirds had not been given 
to us, so you notice, money was not the object, if it was 
affection I hope I have not been deficient in my best 
endeavors to prove my constant desire to promote his 
happiness, and save his interest — it has always been my 
first object to see him happy — none but a parent can 
tell the joy he expressed on the birth of Henry — nor 
how happy I was when I had a half douzen children 
standing round me for their breakfast and supper con- 
sisted of rye bread tosted, the fragments of cold coffee 
boyled and put on milk. I always did it with my own 
hands, they as cheerful and satisfied as if it was a 
dainty, for why? Because mother gave it them — at 
dinner my children always dined with us — cheap soup 
or pudding would be generally seen. Count Rumford's 
book was of much use to me. I learn'd many cheap 
dishes and made them satisfactory to my family — I 
was grateful for the bright prospect the children as they 
advanced for their readiness to learn and the very great 
love they show their mother. ..." 

Aaron Bancroft and Lucretia Chandler were married 
in 1780. They both died nearly fifty-three years later, 
in 1839. The end came first to Mrs. Bancroft. It 




AARON BANCROFT 

Father of George Bancroft 
Frotn a miniature in the possession of Professor Wilder D. Bancroft 



1800-1813] INHERITANCE AND BOYHOOD 17 

has been seen that her husband, who two months 
earher had preached his last sermon, then took to 
his house and never left it for the four remaining 
months of his life. Such parents must needs produce 
a remarkable family. The number of their children, 
thirteen, was less remarkable then than it would be 
now. George Bancroft was the fourth son and eighth 
child. 

Of his brothers, the eldest, Henry, died at the age of 
thirty, yet after having won distinction as an East 
Indian sea-captain and sailing-master on one of Mac- 
Donough's vessels in the battle of Lake Champlain. 
The second son, John Chandler, also followed the sea 
and was lost on a voyage at the age of thirty-two. 
Three of the other children died in infancy. The 
eldest daughter, Eliza, married "Honest John" Davis, 
who became Governor of Massachusetts and United 
States Senator. Three of their five sons were Judge 
J. C. Bancroft Davis, General Hasbrook Davis and 
Mr. Andrew McFarland Davis. Another daughter of 
Aaron and Lucretia Bancroft, Jane Putnam, the 
recipient of the letter just quoted, became the mother of 
Admiral (Aaron) Bancroft Gherardi. To Bancroft's 
sister Lucretia (Mrs. Welcome Farnum) he was greatly 
indebted, through the whole course of his work as a 
writer, for acute and sympathetic criticism upon manu- 
scripts and proofs. The "rye bread tested, the frag- 
ments of cold coffee boyled and put on milk" were dis- 
pensed by the happy mother to a rarely potential group 
of children. 

The traditions of George Bancroft's boyhood are 



18 GEORGE BANCROFT [I8OO-I813 

scanty. There is the record* that the mother of his 
playmate, Stephen SaHsbury, had a poor opinion of 
him. " I was a wild boy," Bancroft is reported to have 
said late in life to a cousin -of this friend of his youth, 
" and your aunt did not like me. She was always fearful 
that I would get her son into bad ways, and still more 
alarmed lest I should some day be the cause of his 
being brought home dead. There was a river, or piece 
of water, near Worcester, where I used to beguile young 
Salisbury, and having constructed a rude sort of raft, 
he and I would pass a good deal of our playtime in 
aquatic amusements, not by any means unattended by 
danger. Madam's remonstrances were all in vain, and 
she was more and more confirmed in the opinion that I 
was a 'wild, bad boy.' However, nothing beyond an 
occasional wetting ever occurred, yet I never rose in her 
estimation, and a 'wild boy' I continued to be up to 
manhood."^ More prophetic of the future, the article 
in which this opinion is recorded tells also that when 
Bancroft "was only six years old, his father referred to 
him a question in Roman history over which the great 
chief justice, Theophilus Parsons, and a friend were 
disputing." In another magazine article,^ for which 
Bancroft himself supplied much of the material, Pro- 
fessor Sloane describes his meagre earliest schooling: 
"His school life at Worcester is scarcely worthy of 

' See "Homes and Haunts of George Bancroft," by Alfred S. 
Roe. New England Magazine, October, 1900. 

2 See "An Hour with George Bancroft," by Charles K. Tucker- 
man. Magazine of American History, March, 1891. 

= See "George Bancroft— In Society, in Politics, in Letters," 
by William M. Sloane. The Century Magazine, January, 1887. 



1800-1813] INHERITANCE AND BOYHOOD 19 

mention, so unsatisfactory was the instruction. His 
father's home was on a farm a mile and a half from the 
town in one direction, and Nelson's school, the only 
one of any repute, at the extreme opposite corner, so 
that from eight to eleven his daily tasks were begun and 
ended by a walk of more than two miles. When, at 
eleven, he left home for Exeter, he found himself, 
thanks to a friend of his father's who read Caesar 
with him, on a level of attainments with his fellows." 

At Phillips Academy, in Exeter, New Hampshire, 
George Bancroft was to receive his two years of 
special preparation for Harvard College. The prin- 
cipal of the school, Dr. Benjamin Abbot, was one of the 
great teachers, in the days before great schools, who 
impressed themselves indelibly upon the lives of their 
young pupils. When in 1870 Bancroft, minister at 
Berlin, wrote to a trustee of the Phillips Exeter Academy 
about a scholarship he was planning to endow, he said : 
"A schoolboy is forgotten in the places of his haunts, 
but for himself he can never forget them. Exeter is 
dear to me for the veneration in which I hold Dr. 
Abbot, my incomparable preceptor, and for the helping 
hand extended to me by its endowments." In 1883, 
when he presided at the centennial dinner of the school, 
he said of his master: "In the time that I was under 
his care I cannot recall from any pupil a saying about 
him that was not full of respect. To-day, though it is 
seventy years since I passed from his care, my heart 
warms with affection as I recall his name." In Pro- 
fessor Sloane's article the subordinate teachers are 
touched upon : " His other master was Hildreth, father 



20 GEORGE BANCROFT [1800-1813 

of the historian, a notable teacher, strong and sug- 
gestive, but at times severe and harsh. With the other 
masters, Fuller and Ware,^ he had little intercourse 
and no tasks, although he always found a welcome and 
good wholesome talk in Fuller's room when he cared to 
visit him in the evening." 

The influence of a powerful master was the more 
powerful because the school itself was small and 
frucrally equipped. When Bancroft came to Exeter all 
tuition was free, and certain pupils, of whom Bancroft 
became one, were special beneficiaries from the funds 
with which John Phillips had endowed the school. 
It was during Bancroft's first year at Exeter that a tui- 
tion fee of three dollars a quarter was first collected. 
So narrow were the means of the Bancroft family that 
the schoolboy is said to have paid no visits to Worcester 
through the two years of his life at Exeter. The holi- 
days were passed at Portsmouth with his father's friend, 
the Rev. Nathan Parker, at whose ordination m the 
Portsmouth parish Aaron Bancroft had preached the 
sermon, September 14, 1808. To this friend we are 
indebted for a glimpse of George Bancroft soon after 
his establishment at Exeter: 

From Nathan Parker to Aaron Bancroft. 

"Portsmouth, Oct. 10, 1811. 

"I have this day made a visit at Exeter, and spent 
an hour with George. I found him in good health, and 
perfectly satisfied with his situation. He appears to 

1 Henry Horton Fuller and Henry Ware. 




LUCRETIA BANCROFT 

Mother of George Bancroft 
Fro77i a 7niniat2ire in the possession of Andrew Mc Far land Davis 



1800-1813] INHERITANCE AND BOYHOOD 21 

enter into the studies which he is pursuing with ardour 
and laudible ambition, which gives promise of distinc- 
tion, and which must be pecuHarly grateful to a parent. 
I conversed with him on his studies, and found him very 
ready to make discriminating remarks; and as much 
as I expected from him, I was supprized at the intelli- 
gence, with which he conversed, and the maturity of 
mind, which he discovered. He said that he was 
classed with students much older than he, among whom 
was Holman of your neighborhood, and that when they 
took their rank according to merit he was placed at the 
head. I found that he had become acquainted with 
the distinctions which are conferred on those who 
excelled, and was desirous of obtaining them. I was 
much pleased with the zeal, which he discovered on this 
subject. He said there were prizes distributed every 
year, or every term, (I forget which) to those, who 
excelled in particular studies. He expressed a great 
desire to obtain one, but said he was afraid he should 
not succeed, for he was the youngest but three in the 
academy, and he did not think he should gain a prize; 
but he would try. These you may say are trifling 
things; but they discover a disposition of mind, with 
which I think you must be gratified, 

" I made inquiries of Mr. Abbot concerning him. He 
observed that he was a very fine lad ; that he appeared 
to have the stamina of a distinguished man, that he took 
his rank among the first scholars in the academy; and that 
he wished I would send him half a dozen such boys. 

*'I feel extremely gratified, that I am able to give you 
so good an account of George; and that you have so 



22 GEORGE BANCROFT [1800-1813 

much reason to hope, that he will be an honour and a 
comfort to his parents and friends. It is my most hearty 
prayer, that he may continue to deserve the love of all, 
who are interested in his improvement; and that the 
hopes of parental affection may be fully gratified. 

"I expect him to spend a few days with me on 
thanksgiving week; and hope that he will gratify me 
by spending with me the next vacation. If there be 
any thing in which I can be useful to him, you will 
confer a favour by informing me of it. ..." 

It was in one of the vacations at Portsmouth that 
Bancroft heard Webster, not yet upon the national 
stage, deliver an Independence Day oration. This, 
it may be assumed, was Webster's address to the 
"Washington Benevolent Society" of Portsmouth on 
July 4, 1812, his first important political utterance, 
which led to his appointment as a delegate to the Rock- 
ingham convention where he was first nominated for 
Congress. Bancroft's remembrance, recorded in Pro- 
fessor Sloane's paper, that Webster made no "gesture 
whatever except that once he placed his right hand over 
his heart," may be taken to indicate the boy's capacity 
to receive and retain an impression. 

At school in 1812 we find Bancroft fulfilling the ex- 
pectations of those who believed in him, and attaining 
his own desires; for he "carried off the prize of four 
dollars, as the scholar who most distinguished himself 
in constancy and parsing the Greek and Latm lan- 
guages. His reward appears to have been given him in 
the form of a book, 'Elements of Criticism'; and it 



1800-1813] INHERITANCE AND BOYHOOD'!'^ 

may be inferred from his subsequent career that he 
made good use of it."^ That he was, moreover, a 
member of the "Washington Whites," a school mihtary 
company formed for the local celebration of the obse- 
quies of Washington and surviving till 1818, is another 
bit of school tradition worth preserving. The more im- 
portant fact is that in 1813, a little before reaching the 
age of thirteen, he passed from Exeter into the freshman 
class of Harvard College. 

' See Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. A Historical 
Sketch. By Charles H. Bell. Exeter, N. H., 1883. 



II 

PREPARATION AT HOME AND ABROAD 

1813—1822 

Bancroft entered Harvard College three years after 
President Kirkland became its head. This was a 
fortunate time. Activity and expansion were in the 
air. The historian of the college has written: "The 
early period of the administration of President Kirkland 
was preeminently distinguished by bold, original, and in 
many respects successful endeavours to elevate the 
standard of education in the University, and to extend 
the means of instruction and multiply accommoda- 
tions in every department."^ The catalogue of im- 
provement includes the building of Holworthy, Uni- 
versity and Divinity Halls, and the Medical College in 
Boston; the extensive repairing of Holden Chapel, 
Harvard, Stoughton, Hollis and Massachusetts Halls; 
the enlargement of the library, the raising of salaries, 
the addition of fifteen professorships to the ten pre- 
viously in existence. Yet in attendance the college 
did not rapidly outgrow the proportions of an academy. 
Between 1813 and 1817, when Bancroft received his 

' History of Harvard University. By Josiah Quincy. Vol. II, 
p. 333. 

24 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 25 

bachelor's degree, the greatest number of under- 
graduates was 315, in 1814, the smallest number, 279, 
in 1815. Thus, as in every small college before and 
since, the learners and the teachers were brought into 
intimate relationship. 

The little faculty did not abound in men whose names 
have endured. In the catalogue for Bancroft's fresh- 
man year, the name of Edward Everett appears; he 
was then tutor in Latin. Again in Bancroft's junior 
and senior years Everett was professor of Greek 
Literature. Throughout Bancroft's course the Rev. 
Andrews Norton was librarian, and for the last two 
years Dexter lecturer on Biblical Criticism. Jared 
Sparks and John Gorham Palfrey appear as resident 
graduates in Bancroft's senior year, and in his one year 
as resident graduate — the period in which one holding 
the bachelor's and studying for the master's degree was 
dignified by the title of Sir, as "Sir Bancroft" — Palfrey 
was a proctor and Sparks a tutor in Geometry, Natural 
Philosophy and the Elements of Astronomy. But 
neither with these future fellow-historians nor yet with 
his classmates — among whom were Samuel A. Eliot, 
perhaps his most intimate college friend, Stephen Salis- 
bury, the Worcester schoolmate to whom allusion has 
been made, Caleb Cushing, Samuel Joseph May and 
Stephen Higginson Tyng — does he appear to have come 
in contact so much as with a few members of the teach- 
ing force. What Dr. Peabody wrote of the decade after 
Bancroft's undergraduate days was doubtless true in 
his time: "The students certainly considered the 
Faculty as their natural enemies. There existed be- 



26 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

tween the two parties very little of kindly intercourse, 
and that litde generally secret. If a student went un- 
summoned to a teacher's room it was almost always 
by night."' In these circumstances the genuine friend- 
ships which Bancroft formed with President Kirkland, 
with Everett and with Norton, are the more noteworthy. 
The six years between Bancroft and Everett must have 
seemed a wide space to the undergraduate, and the 
fourteen years of Norton's seniority a chasm. Yet 
the boy developed early a quality of maturity which 
empowered him to meet his accomplished elders 
on terms of equality. Many evidences of it will appear 
in the records of his student days in Europe. That 
his own contemporaries discovered this quality and 
epitomised it, with the unerring instinct of their kind, in 
a nickname, appears in a passage from a letter to Norton 
(16 September, 1821), in which Bancroft announced the 
winning of his doctor's degree at Gottingen. "Yes, 
Dear Sir, of a verity the name which my comrades at 
Exeter gave me in playful good nature, and which fol- 
lowed me to Cambridge,^ has now been made over to me 
according to the strictest forms of the University and 
the statutes of the philosophical faculty, and now from 
one end of the town to the other the words to my ears 
so enchanting, Doctor, Herr Doctor, are cried out to 
me by friends and foes, men and women, tradesmen 
and mechanics and beggars." Bancroft's letters from 

• Harvard Reminiscences. By Andrew Preston Peabody. 
p. 200. 

2 Letters of 1818 from S. A. Eliot in Cambridge to Bancroft in 
Gottingen begin, " Dear Doctor." 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 27 

Europe to his three older friends, Kirkland, Norton and 
Everett, abound in tokens of the debt with which their 
affectionate interest in him enriched his undergraduate 
days. 

For Bancroft's routine of Ufe and work at Cambridge 
there is not much to show. The College catalogue 
records that his rooms were successively at "Captain 
Dana's," at Massachusetts 16, Stoughton 22, Hol- 
worthy 4, and in his resident graduate year in the house 
of Professor Levi Hedge, whose eminent son, Frederic 
Henry Hedge, was soon to receive under Bancroft's di- 
rection his German preparation for Harvard College. A 
faded note-book, preserving some of Bancroft's college 
exercises in composition, the earliest piece of his writing 
to fall into my hands, has for its appropriate beginning, 
dated 25 February, 1815, a discussion of Dimidium 
facti, qui cepit, habet. "In this sententious maxim," 
the theme opens, "has Horace the Prince of lyrick 
poetry presented to our view the difficulty of beginning. 
But why is it as arduous to begin, as to complete an 
enterprise?" Thus does the boy, four months be- 
yond fourteen, enter upon the career of writing which 
is to fill nearly all of his ninety-one years. Two 
months later he draws a discouraging comparison 
between the reading of fiction and of works of 
morality. "The wonderful exploits of a visionary 
hero excite a deeper interest than the brilliant actions 
of illustrious generals; and many are delighted with 
the beauties of the 'Scottish Chiefs,' while they de- 
rive no pleasure from 'Christian Morals.'" On the 
anniversary of Bunker Hill his exercise is in verse, 



28 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

and becomingly patriotic. He would sing of his native 
land : 

"'Tis said the Indians, tho' a barb'rous horde, 
Will noble subjects to our bards afford." 

Then follows a catalogue of Indian names. One must 
be content with the conclusion of it, and the young 
singer's reflection: 

" Caun-bat-ant, Caw-na-come, Qua-de-qui-na, 
Squan-to, Woo-sam-e-quen, and Manida, 
O pleasing sounds! harmonious names, like these, 
Would grace Pope's numbers and give Waller ease!" 

In these crude beginnings the boy's paternity of the man 
was dimly yet surely expressing itself. 

In quite another field of learning, there is in the 
Harvard College Library a further specimen of Ban- 
croft's undergraduate work. This is a large sheet* 
on which is inscribed an astronomical thesis in Latin 
Invenire Modum Verum Nodorum Lunae. For the 
value of its mathematical computations, I am not quali- 
fied to speak; but its heading in decorated Gothic 
letters, its carefully wrought border and diagram, with 
four accompanying lines of appropriate Latin verse, 
bespeak a precisian's pride in the work of the hand no 
less than the head. 

In the library, too, may be found the record of the 
books which Bancroft borrowed during his senior and 
graduate years, 1816-1818. Theology, science — es- 

' In "Bibliographical Collections," number 32. 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 29 

pecially astronomy at about the time of the thesis — 
classic and Enghsh Hterature, and toward the end a 
preponderance of works of German scholarship and 
letters — these are more noticeable than the historical 
writings which his own later development would lead 
one to expect. 

Bancroft's membership in Phi Beta Kappa speaks for 
his good standing in college. At the commencement 
exercises of his class, 27 August, 1817, when Caleb 
Gushing delivered the Salutatory Oration in Latin, 
Bancroft's part, the "second English Oration," was 
"On the dignity and utility of philosophy of the human 
mind."^ Short and slender, keen of eye and quick of 
movement, the orator, not quite seventeen years old, 
must have seemed a mere David arrayed against a 
theme so gigantic. The Advertiser for August 30th 
contained what the editor called some "very just re- 
marks " upon the ceremonies contributed by " a friend." 
"The exercises by the candidates for the degree of 
Bachelor of Arts," said this writer, " were composed in 
a pure, correct and manly style. The besetting faults 
of youth were avoided, and though we must confess 
that amidst various degrees of merit, no part was pre- 
cisely of such a transcendant description as to stamp 
an exclusive impression upon our minds, yet we are 
happy to be relieved from the necessity of individual 
encomiums, by the general tone of excellence which 
prevailed." One may safely infer that Bancroft's 
oratory was little better or worse than the average. 
The manuscript of the oration itself having been pre- 

' Boston Daily Advertiser, August 28, 1817. 



30 GEORGE BANCROFT [I813-I822 

served, it is not necessacy to rely entirely upon a con- 
temporary opinion. The concluding paragraph, redo- 
lent of the commencement platform, may speak for the 
whole: "Those who have engaged in the study of 
mind, have never shrunk from their labours. On the 
contrary they have become more and more enamoured 
of the science. They have willingly immolated on its 
shrine all their hopes of worldly honours and emolu- 
ments. The danger is not that they will find their 
employment disgusting, but that it will too much en- 
gross their attention. The man who has been intro- 
duced to the wonders and glories and pleasures of in- 
tellect feels himself elevated above the common sphere 
of mankind. He lives in an upper world and contem- 
plates with calm indifference the labours of ordinary 
men, as of inferior beings, like the majestick eagle, who, 
heedless of the croakings of the ravens below, rises on 
his ample wing, 

'Sailing with supreme dominion 
Through the azure deep of air.' " 

The most important part of the preparation for 
Bancroft's work in life was yet to come — in his four 
years of foreign study. \^lien he heard in 1828 of 
President Kirkland's resignation, he wrote to him a 
letter from which these words are taken: "And among 
the results of your career I hope you will not be un- 
willing to count the labours and efforts of those whose 
efforts, if they are of value, derive that value originally 
from yourself. To that number I belong. To you, 
and to you altogether, and to you alone do I hold my- 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 31 

self indebted for all that renders my life useful and 
honourable."* That Bancroft had in mind especially the 
circumstances which gave him his term of foreign study 
may be inferred from the following letter written to Mr. 
Lodge nearly fifty years later, telling also of the further 
influences to which the young student was indebted: 

To Mr. Lodge. 

"Washington, 12 June, 1877. 

"The proposition to me to goto Europe came to me 
from Dr. Kirkland ; Edward Everett having in general 
terms recommended that some one should follow him at 
Gottingen. My father had the most implicit confidence 
in the judgment of Mr. George Cabot, and being in 
Boston in the spring of 1818 at the annual meeting of 
the Massachusetts Congregational clergy, could not 
forbear asking his opinion of what it would be best for 
me to do. Mr. Cabot emphatically advised that the 
offer should be accepted; he had no- doubt about it. 
His opinion was positive and clear; without reservation 
or qualification. So my father told me. This consulta- 
tion and answer encouraged ; but I, like Mr. Cabot, had 
never had a moment of hesitation. 

"About the same time Mr. Andrews Norton, who 
was writing an article for the North American Review 
on Franklin and was inclined to believe certain stories 
about him that were circulated under the pretended 
authority of John Adams, resolved to go and make 
enquiries directly of the venerable patriot of Quincy. 
Mr. Norton who at that time was as much attached to 

^ From letter lent by the Hon. H. C. Lodge. 



32 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

me as it was possible for one of his years to be to one of 
mine, took me one fine morning with him on his ex- 
cursion. Imagine what a boon it was for me to pass 
a long afternoon and part of an evening with John 
Adams. Mr. Norton pressed him with enquiries about 
Franklin; the okl man put them aside; . . . Mr. 
Norton could not extract from him one single disparag- 
ing word about Franklin. I was introduced to Mr. 
Adams as one about to repair to the University of 
Gottingen. He did not omit expressing his opinion 
dogmatically that it was best for Americans to be edu- 
cated in their own country.^ . . ." 

The fashion of foreign study for young Americans 
with teaching or preaching ahead of them was just 
beginning to prevail. Ticknor and Cogswell, besides 
Everett, afforded shining examples of what a young man 
of promise, in Bancroft's immediate academic circle, 
might well do with himself. With Bancroft, however, 
the question was rather what those who believed in him 
would do with him, for the family purse had grown no 
more adequate to the occasion than in the school days, 
when he shunned even the expense of coming home for 
his vacations. It was his good fortune to have proved 
his abilities to Everett, who must have taught him both 
Latin and Greek; to have won so much of Norton's re- 
gard that a year after he had gone to Europe, this older 
friend addressed him, "^My dear representative of the 

' For a fuller account of this meeting, see Century Magazine, 
July, 1887. "An Incident in the Life of John Adams," by 
George Bancroft. 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 83 

better part of human nature, as I believe I once told you 
that you are;" and, best of all, to have secured the con- 
fidence and support of President Kirkland himself. 

There can be no doubt that Kirkland, in providing 
Bancroft with the means for meeting his expenses 
abroad, looked upon his studies as preparatory for the 
ministry. That the President had also in mind the 
possibility of utilising for purposes of instruction the 
learning which Bancroft should bring back with him 
from Germany may be inferred from the "Extract from 
President Kirkland's letter of introduction to Professor 
Eichhorn," which Bancroft copied into the note-book 
containing his early themes: "They [his friends] wish 
him to attend especially to philology, the ancient lan- 
guages and Oriental literature, that he may thus be 
qualified to pursue theological studies to the greatest 
benefit, to give instruction as any opening may occur and 
invite, and become an accomplished philologian and 
biblical critic, able to expound and defend the Revela- 
tion of God." In the Records of Overseers of Harvard 
College^ there is the entry under June 25, 1818 : "Voted, 
that Mr. George Bancroft, about to go abroad to pursue 
his theological studies, be entitled to receive a moiety 
of the proceeds of Madam Mary Saltonstall's donation, 
for the year beginning, 1 July, 1818." Subsequent 
records of similar purport up to November of 1821, de- 
fine him as a "student of (or in) divinity." The sums 
which the college funds provided were evidently supple- 
mented from private sources to which President Kirk- 
land could appeal to good purpose. From whatever 

^ Vol. VI, p. 282, Harvard College Library. 



34 GEORGE BANCROFT [I813-I822 

sources the income was derived, and to whatever ends 
its donors expected to see its fruits devoted, there is the 
clear entry in the note-book already drawn upon: 
"Left Boston, June 27th, 1818." If there is no record 
of the partings from his family at Worcester and from 
his true friends at Cambridge, the hopes and confidence 
which followed the young adventurer into the ancient 
fields of learning surely require no proofs. The mental 
capacity and force of character which awaited the de- 
velopment of opportunity and circumstance, were travel- 
ling companions to whose care he could be safely 
committed. 

For the four years now about to ensue, Bancroft's 
profuse diaries and frequent letters to kinsfolk and 
friends preserve a minute record of his experiences, im- 
pressions and plans. Abridged as they are, the records 
here given may seem disproportionate to the annals 
of other periods of his life. But they reveal a youth so 
extraordinary as to justify a generous chapter. Here, 
as wherever else it is possible in the course of Bancroft's 
career, he shall tell his own story. 

From Leyden he wrote on August 4, 1818, to Edward 
Everett, acknowledging the letters of introduction and 
advice which awaited him at Amsterdam, and setting 
forth some of his plans of study. "The kindness of 
friends," says this letter, "places at my disposal $700 
per ann. At Gottingen Dr. K[irkland] assured me, 
that S500 or perhaps less would place me in a respecta- 
ble and comfortable situation for a year." From The 
Hague on August Gth he wrote to Andrews Norton, 
telling of his safe arrival in Holland on the last day of 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 35 

July, and describing a visit to Professor Bake in Leyden. 
"To-morrow," he writes before an affectionate con- 
clusion, "I depart for Gottingen. Surely a residence 
of three years among a new people must much change 
my manners and habits and character. If it makes me 
unworthy of your extreme and kind regards, I believe 
there are some, who love me enough to regret it; but by 
none would it be so much lamented as by myself." 
Through longer extracts from letters and journals we 
may now follow his course. 

To President Kirkland. 

"Gottingen, August 15, 1818. 

" Dearest Sir : Last night after meeting with rather more 
than the usual vexations, to which travellers are exposed, 
I found myself fairly arrived at the city of the Georgia 
Augusta. It is said, that the virtues of life can be exer- 
cised only in society, but I think a voyage at sea affords 
a fine opportunity for cultivating the Christian virtues of 
patience and resignation, and travelling in the public 
coaches of Germany would learn any one to bear a 
lingering disease without a shrug or a sigh. . . . 

"As I drew near Gottingen the rumours of blood and 
war in the city made me tremble not a little. A few 
days ago, one of the fraternity feeling himself insulted 
by a butcher, after an ineffectual complaint to the 
Prorector of the University, cried out to his fellows for 
revenge. Immediately they rushed forth to attack the 
audacious man, who had presumed to bring his hand in 
too close contact with the scholar's ear. The poor 



36 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

creature with his family hid themselves in the cellar, 
while the members of the first University in Europe 
nobly demonstrated upon his windows that the particles 
which constitute glass, have less cohesive attraction 
than those of stone. To restore order soldiers are called 
in from Hanover. These the students, armed with 
nothing but canes, spiritedly attacked, and defeated, 
but gave way to a reinforcement of infantry. Several 
were severely wounded, but no lives were lost. For the 
vanquished nothing remained but to desert the city, and 
this they did in a body. Twelve hundred at once de- 
parted, proclaiming as they marched away, the Philis- 
tines shall mourn. And truly the Philistines (i. e. the 
inhabitants of G.) find that their loss amounts to at least 
SI, 500 daily. I find sorrow sitting upon every counte- 
nance. It would seem, as if they had been robbed of 
their possessions and children. . . . 

"What my immediate occupations are to be I cannot 
yet decide. The first month or two must be passed 
. . . [letter torn] the German language for conversation, 
and in making myself acquainted with the place. My 
plans of study can then be advantageously formed, and 
these I hope in a few weeks to communicate to you. I 
need not say, how dear to me any words from you would 
be, nor how closely any instructions from you would be 
followed by 

"Your very grateful and very affectionate 

"Geo. Bancroft." 

"The Gottingcn tumult does not affect me in the 
least, except, that very many rooms will be vacated, and 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 37 

access afforded me to the best instructors. Were it 
not for this commotion, it would have been difficult to 
obtain a room, and the more approved masters have had 
all their hours occupied. I shall not join the University 
till ^Michaelmas, the beginning of the next term. In the 
meantime Mr. Benecke will be my only Tutor." 

Bancroft's journal describes the beginning of his 
daily routine: 

" On the morning of the 15th I sallied forth to deliver 
one of my letters of introduction. I found Mr. Benecke, 
the Patron in chief of all students who speak English 
only, to be a friendly man, of about fifty, under whose 
auspices I found myself two days after established in 
my little dominions.^ Under his care I study the 
German Language, spending an hour privatissime each 
day with him; and it was at first quite amusing to me 
to see how careful he was in observing the second when 
the hour had elapsed, and how uneasy and even dis- 
turbed he is when I am rude enough to stay a moment 
beyond the time. I must rise and fly at the instant, 
when the hand of time is on the point of the hour, even 
if in the midst of a line, aye, or of a long word." 

The presentation of letters to Gauss, the astronomer, 
and Blumenbach, the physiologist, took place within a 
few days. By each the new-comer was hospitably re- 
ceived. Meanwhile the diary records diligent reading 

* A letter to one of his sisters describes his two comfortable 
rooms "in a fine wide street, the first in the city," his simple fare 
and manner of life. 



38 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

of Schiller and Goethe. "I am only more and more 
astonished at the indecency and immorality of the latter. 
He appears to prefer to represent vice as lovely and 
exciting sympathy, than virtue, and would rather take 
for his heroine a prostitute or a profligate, than give 
birth to that purity of thought and loftiness of soul, 
which it is the peculiar duty of the poet to raise, by con- 
necting his inventions with the actions of heroes, and 
embodying in verse the merits of the benefactors of 
mankind." 

^^ August 30. . . . This evening again have I been 
with Prof. Blumenbach and family. They are kind to 
me indeed. The Professor spoke of Goethe. He 
(Goethe) is a large stout man of about seventy, fond 
of amusement and mirth, fonder of eating and drinking, 
and notwithstanding his love of good company and good 
living, possessed of a great deal of majesty and form. 
Beside his works in poetry and belles-lettres, he has 
written on mineralogy, on botany, and lately published 
a very voluminous work in three vols, upon optics. 
The object of this treatise was to annihilate Sir Isaac 
Newton, and his theory; but, alas! it fell stillborn from 
the press, excited no attention, gained not even one 
opposer, call[ed] forth not one refutation. The re- 
viewers bestowed only five or six lines upon it, lamenting 
that men woukl write books on subjects about which 
they are profoundly ignorant. The poor man, who had 
hoped to crown his fame by this, was wofully disap- 
pointed and mortified. 

"Madame B., in whose hands I had put Prof. 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 39 

Frisbie's Inaugural Address, expressed great and real 
satisfaction with the work, particularly admiring and 
approving the remarks upon the German writers. I 
had, during the week, received a letter of introduction 
to Prof. B. from Mr. Everett, which was charmingly 
written. They applauded it to the skies, and Fraulein 
B. insisted that it was sehr gottlich." 

^ "September 9. . . . This evening I for the first time 
visited Prof. Dissen, so celebrated for his learning and 
genius. He is a short man, extremely near-sighted, 
wonderfully learned, very kind and obliging, and has of- 
fered me his good counsels, whenever I shall need them. 
He spoke of my countryman Prof. Everett. He (Prof. 
E.), when here, set no bounds to his industry. He 
allowed himself no more than six hours for sleep, and 
devoted the whole of the day to study. At first he em- 
ployed some time with the Oriental Languages, but 
afterwards devoted himself almost exclusively to philol- 
ogy, and became exceedingly learned. Besides this, 
he had a vast number of acquaintances in Germany, and 
during the vacations, he visited the principal cities,' par- 
ticularly Weimar, Dresden, Berlin, &c. He also used 
the very best instructors, sparing no labour or expense in 
improving his mind and acquiring good learning. . . ." 

To Edward Everett. 

"GoTTiNGEN, September 12, 1818. 
"I have now been in Gottingen nearly a month, and 
have gained some insight into their systems of study. 



40 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

For a knowledge of the courses, which it would be most 
advantageous for me to hear, I am almost exclusively 
indebted to your last letter from London. The 
friends, which I have made here through your interces- 
sions, cannot of course accommodate their advice to 
my particular views and situation. 

"When I left America it was not settled very definitely, 
what plan of study I should pursue. In general it was 
desired, that I should devote myself to Philology and 
Orientalism, and if possible, in a leisure hour, attend 
such other courses, as would aiford an agreeable re- 
laxation. All more particular deliberation could better 
be done, after arriving at the University. Now that I 
am here, and find the intellectual treasures of the world 
collected near me, and the most learned instructors 
around me, by whose labours I can profit, I would 
gladly make such a use of these advantages, as would 
enable me on returning home to act an useful and an 
honourable part in society. To efl^ect this it is necessary 
to have a definite aim; and, indeed, to pursue anything 
to advantage, one must form an exact and compre- 
hensive plan. 

"On stating my views of study to my friends here, 
they told me I had better at once arrange the manner, 
in which I would employ myself for the whole time of 
residing here; that two or three years are the least 
number, which can be thought of by one, who wishes to 
make a respectable progress in Philology; and that the 
eastern languages would furnish one labour for life. 
To understaml the Hebrew Bible thoroughly and 
critically two or three other languages must be learned; 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 41 

and these would give me so much occupation that 
philology must become quite a secondary affair. Or, 
on the other hand, I may give myself up to classical 
literature, and at the same time resign the hope of doing 
much at interpreting the Scriptures. A question then 
arises in my mind, whether after gaining a fair degree of 
acquaintance with the Classics, and that chiefly in view 
of understanding them, I should not strike off into the 
wide region of Oriental literature? 

"In deciding on this point, it would be proper to 
think of the state of learning among us at Cambridge. 
Criticism in every department receives little enough 
attention; but most especially in relation to the Eastern 
languages. Of the forty now studying theology there, 
all attend a little Hebrew, but most of them for no other 
purpose than to forget it again. Of the twenty or 
thirty chapters, which they read, nothing more is at- 
tempted than by the help of the Lexicon to make the 
Original and the English agree. The Oriental depart- 
ment, I suppose, would open a fine and inexhaustible 
field for labour, would be interesting for the novelties 
it presented, would give knowledge valuable in itself, 
necessary to accomplish a theologian, and much wanted 
in America. But it must also be remembered, that in 
America this branch of learning is very little esteemed, 
that there are few, who would care to learn anything of 
it, and that therefore the advantages to be derived from 
it, would be chiefly a sweet but secret satisfaction. 

"So far as it respects my immediate occupations I 
can have no doubt. I shall follow the advice you have 
given me, and wherever you have expressed an opinion 



42 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

on a doubtful point I shall govern myself accordingly. 
I shall hear Dissen on Demosthenes and iEschines, 
Koster on Hebrew Grammar, and Welcker (he is the 
only professor who reads on Latin) on Tacitus. Prof. 
Benecke takes care of my German, and I have found 
him after his way kindness indeed. Respecting the 
choice between young Planck and Eichhorn I am yet 
undecided. Planck is very weak I believe, and speaks 
exceedingly fast and low, so that even the Germans 
lose a great part of his lecture, and I am rather afraid I 
should lose the whole. I am, too, very desirous of 
knowing Eichhorn: He is more celebrated at Cam- 
bridge than any other of the Gottingen Professors, and 
it was expected he would be the master, at whose feet 
I should sit. Yet I should be very unwilling to give my 
friends any reasonable ground for fearing that I should 
lose my belief in, or respect for Christianity. I do not 
myself believe, that my reverence for a religion, which 
is allied with every early and pleasant association, which, 
as it regards its evidence, has already been the object 
of my study, and which is connected with all my hopes 
of happiness and usefulness and distinction, can be 
diminished by ridicule. The natural effect of observing 
great talents united with a disposition to mock what so 
many revere, is to excite indignation or pity. Were 
Planck well I would hear him at once, and even as it is, 
I am inclined to do so. I have not yet visited Prof. E. 
I believe the best mode will be for me to call on him to- 
morrow, and if he appear to expect that I should learn 
from him, to decide upon attending him. If you should 
hereafter favour me with your opinions about studying 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 43 

Oriental Literature, and if 'tis advised me to do it, I 
suppose it must be done with him. . . ." 

"September 13. ... I have seen Eichhorn to-day, 
for the first time. He is old, yet stout and hearty; very 
strong built, of fine proportions, broad shoulders, tall 
enough, with a fine open countenance, good natured in 
his manners, and familiar. He reached me his hand 
very cordially, enquired particularly about my accom- 
modations, and the manner of securing the best and 
bade me come and see him very often. He enquired 
about the system of studies I must pursue, and on my 
stating my wishes on this subject, he invited me at once 
to attend his lectures, and promised me the best place 
in his lecture room. He spoke of America, that she 
was now making gigantick strides in improvement, and 
added with a wink, that she was much dreaded by 
England. He repeated his invitation to visit him very 
often, saying he was well acquainted with the American 
gentlemen who have resided here, particularly with Mr. 
Everett, for whom he has the highest regard." 

"October 1. I have been for some days a regular 
matriculated student of the University of Gottingen. 
On the 22nd of September I obtained my Matrikel. 
The process of procuring it is very simple. The doors 
of the University stand ever open; and all are invited 
to the rich banquet of learning. Nothing is necessary 
toward becoming a member of the institution, except to 
give your name, your country, the occupation of your 
father, and the studies to which you will devote your- 



44 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

self; on this being known, a paper is immediately 
handed you, by which you become entitled to all the 
privileges and rights of a citizen of the Georgia Augusta. 
At the same time you shake hands with the Prorector, 
by wliich form you are understood to promise that you 
will obey the laws of the University. There is particu- 
lar mention made in the Matrikel of duelling, of directly 
resenting an injury, instead of appealing to the proper 
authorities, of the preservation of a good character, 
and pure morals, of the associations called Lands- 
mannschaften, and of appearing always in decent cloth- 
ins;. The fees amount to about one Louis d'or. The 
present Prorector is Consistorial-Rath Pott. He ap- 
peared particularly pleased on my declaring myself an 
American, and pointing to the name last entered in his 
book, which happened to be the name of a Grecian, bade 
me notice from what distant parts of the globe there 
were representatives at Gottingen. He then very par- 
ticularly requested me to visit him, adding that he 
should have then detained me to hold a conversation 
with me, but he was involved in business and duties of 
his office." 

"October 2. . . . Behold, I have seen a wonder! 
A learned woman, modest, and who once might have 
been handsome; a learned woman, Doctor of Philoso- 
phy, Master of Arts, and one of the best informed men 
in the place. 

"Old Sliizer,' who died some ten years ago, was a 
stern republican abroad and very naturally a tyrant 

' Presumably August Ludwig von Sclilozor, 1735-1809. 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 45 

in his own house. (He wrote a very admirable book 
on the coins of the Russian Empire.) Well— this man 
married— his wife became pregnant, he was mightily 
rejoiced, felt sure it was a boy, boasted of the circum- 
stance to his friends, and destined the young man in his 
own mind for a scholar. His wife was brought to bed, 
and behold, a little miss came to light. The Professor, 
however, nought intimidated, still clung to his resolution, 
and determined to show the world that a woman could 
master the classics as well as anyone. He accordingly 
educated her completely as a boy, employing her con- 
stantly with her books. As she was really possessed of 
a vast deal of mind, she made great proficiency, and he 
determined that she should join the University. This 
she actually did; attending lectures, going like the rest 
of the students with her portfolio under her arm, and 
differing from them only in this, that she was exceeding- 
ly handsome, and wore petticoats. Her conduct how- 
ever, was so perfectly pure and modest, that she never 
received the least indignity, nor was her character ever 
impeached. After becoming in this [way] uncommonly 
learned her father said she must take a degree. This, 
too, she did, acquitting herself undoubtedly with great 
honour in the Latin extemporary disputation and of 
course received, bona fide, a doctor's degree. 

"Shortly after this, to escape this unnatural mode of 
life, she married and removed to Liibeck; her husband 
failed to a large amount, and she removed to Gottingen. 
Here she lives at present, and was visited a great deal, 
but now she is getting on in life, and on account of fre- 
quent ill health sees not much company. In her char- 



46 GEORGE BANCROFT [I813-I822 

acter and conversation she is irreproachable and from 
a long acquaintance with her, I am told, one would never 
hear from her a word that would betray her learning." 

To the Rev. Aaron Bancroft. 

"GoTTiNGEN, October 3, 1818. 

"... The University has no splendid public build- 
ings — economy is the order of the day. Nothing is 
spent in vain, and since a plain building will answer as 
well as any other to hold their Library, they think it 
better to spend their gold in collecting new books than 
in ornament and display. Notwithstanding all this, 
every thing that is necessary for the purpose of instruc- 
tion, or the dignity of the Institution is procured at once, 
without hesitation or meanness in the use of money. 
They have a grand botanical garden, an anatomical 
Hall, an admirable observatory, superintended by one 
of the best astronomers in the world, several hospitals 
for the poor and sick, by means of which excellent 
Physicians are educated, a museum (though not very 
good), and a library of more than two hundred thousand 
volumes. This is by no means all. They have a large 
body of learned and powerful men collected here, men 
of talents, ardour and miraculous industry, and by these 
is this fine instrument put in motion. There are about 
fifty Professors, and every one of them laborious and 
learned, besides a vast number of doctors who are about 
twenty-four or thirty years old, and who are attached 
to the University and take part in instruction in every 
department. In addition to this, there are several in- 



1813-1822] PREPARA TION 47 

structors in each of the modern languages, and who are 
not so immediately a part of the University as the former. 
There are then at Gottingen about eighty regularly 
educated men, many of them in the very first rank of 
men, such as do honour, not only to their country, but 
their species, all of them thoroughly learned in the 
strictest sense of the term, and superior in this respect to 
anything we have in America. Besides this number of 
eighty who are engaged in the weighty affairs of science, 
there are a large number (as I have just said) who teach 
the modern languages and accomplishments of that 
kind; and, yet further, regularly appointed masters of 
fencing, riding and dancing, &c. ; of all this vast num- 
ber I can take my choice, and accordingly I have 
selected the best in each of those departments to which 
I devote myself. . . ." 

"Octobers. . . . Wolf, the Greek Professor at Berlin, 
is perhaps the greatest scholar in Germany; and as such 
one hears his name incessantly repeated and with terms 
of the hio-hest admiration. His character as a man is an 
entirely different affair, and a thing which never comes 
into consideration, when he is spoken of as a scholar. 
. . . He treated his wife in so shocking a manner, that 
she was obliged to obtain a separation, in which state 
she now lives. He has a daughter also. This poor girl 
he would often keep up very late at night reading 
Homer to him, while he lay in bed; and if the unhappy 
creature happened to nod a little towards twelve or 
one o'clock, he would give her a violent box on the 
ear. The consequence of this was that she took the 



48 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

first opportunity to elope with a young Prussian 
officer. 

"Wolf is now quite old. Of course his days of most 
active exertion are past. He now does little or nothing- 
The salary which he receives as Professor, he procures 
without giving much in return. He announces that he 
will read lectures on this and that author, but he merely 
makes a beginning, reads for a week or two, and then 
makes a journey. A short time ago he gave out that he 
would read no lectures at all, and was actually deter- 
mined to trouble himself no more about them. The 
Prussian Government, however, interfered, and told 
him that if he read no lectures he should receive no 
salary. * Well,' said he, ' if it must be done — I dine from 
two to three, so I will read a lecture from 3 to 4, just 
to assist digestion.' " 

Bancroft's journal gives evidence that the Gottingen 
traditions were long-lived. Michaelis, the biblical 
scholar and teacher, had died in 1791. On October 9, 
1818, Bancroft set down the story of his forcing a poor 
student to give him his silver shoe-buckles in lieu of a 
fee. George Ticknor had written virtually the same 
story in his journal for 1815. Indeed, the diaries of the 
two young men afford many parallels of record and im- 
pression. For Bancroft's immediate occupations and 
plans a portion of a letter may speak. 

To Andrews Norton. 

"Gottingen, October 26, 1818. 
**. . . My lectures which begin on the first of the 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 49 

coming week (two are already begun) relate to the crit- 
icism of the Greek of the New Testament, (in the 
preparation for which I use such works as Schleusner). 
2. The grammatical knowledge of the Hebrew, apart 
from exposition. 3. The critical study of Greek, in 
which language I shall have Theocritus and Demos- 
thenes explained, interpreted, &c. 4. The critical 
study of Latin, Tacitus and Valerius Flaccus being the 
authors selected. Then beside this, I have four days 
in the week lessons in German. My leisure time I 
employ with Greek for the present. These lectures 
continue for six months; at the end of which time, I 
shall have gained possession of Hebrew, done some- 
thing handsome in Greek and Latin, have learnt to 
understand half of Paul's epistles, and have gained a 
general view of the philological terminology. At the 
end of that time I can decide whether I am ready to 
make of myself a mere scholar, to drink strong coffee, 
live without loving or being loved, discussing with 
Porson whether one should read in Sophocles' Ajax, 
9 line, wvrjp or avrjp, and possibly if I live to be eighty 
being able as the crown of human felicity to write an 
octavo volume on the Anapaest. But there have been 
philologians men of fine spirits, such as the world seldom 
sees: How is it with them? An Englishman calls 
them in a body the lacquies of the ancients. This may 
do of most of them, but such as Heyne, Ernesti and 
Rhunkenius deserve a little better treatment. True 
they are merely the interpreters of others; but poetry 
and that too of a high kind often lies concealed under a 
criticism; Addison is even sublime in one of his notes 



50 GEORGE BANCROFT [I813-I822 

■on Milton. We will allow then, these good men (who 
live so near the pole) to be the bright lights, which we 
admire so much in the North, and which sometimes 
last a whole night, while the poets, whom they expound 
are the eternal stars, that are fixed in their spheres for 
ages. . . ." 

It is worth while to draw from another long letter of 
these early days at Gottingen an illustration of the 
young student's enthusiasm: 

To Edward Everett. 

"Gottingen, November 14, 1818. 

"... Dr. K. told me just before I left America, that 
they intended to buy at once, before long, a fine collec- 
tion of books; and would send out some one on purpose, 
teaching him first all that is to be known about title 
pages of books and editions, and their value. Now as 
I am not tall, of dark complexion, and withall rather 
lean, I do think if I should dress myself up in old grey 
clothes, and take a staff in my hand, I could pass 
through all Germany, and be taken for the agent of 
a bookseller or a starving antiquary; Now as one 
could not have a better place to learn the titles, &c., 
of books than this, and no better country than 
this to buy books, I cannot help thinking it would 
be quite fine to send me on a short excursion to 
these convents, whose libraries are just discovered, 
and where one can buy old books and princeps 
editions by the foot. ..." 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 51 

To Mrs. Lucretia Bancroft. 

''GoTTiNGEN, November 25 [1818]. 
"My Dear Mother, . . . Pray can you find me out 
in this dark city ? My kingdom is situated in the widest 
street of the Town, in the largest house in that street 
on the third story. It is about the same size as Ehza's 
chamber, only a Httle higher, and I have with it a small 
bedchamber as large as the adjoining one — Mary's 
chamber as you call'd it in old times. I rise before five 
in the morning, though in this high Northern region the 
sun does not get [up] till very late. On rising I find my 
stove already warm and the room comfortable, and a 
pot of coffee on the table. I drink at once a cup of this, 
and so on at intervals of half an hour till all is gone. At 
seven I go to my drawer and cut me from my brown 
loaf a piece of bread and butter. This lasts me till 
dinner which, as you already know, is brought to me 
and is a solitary meal. After dinner the Germans drink 
coffee again. The evening is the time for visits, that 
is to say if anyone has an inclination to visit, and friends 
who will be glad to see him. If one will study, however, 
in the evening, bread and butter and a cup of tea is his 
repast, and he can labour very well on a light stomach. 
There are several places also to which the students very 
frequently go to eat something warm in the evening. 
At these places they eat as if they were eating the pass- 
over, 'with their hats on their heads, their staves in their 
hands, and they eat in haste.' If anyone takes off his 
hat (or rather his cap, for we wear a sort of cloth cap), 
or shews the least air of a gentleman, the rest of the 
students begin hooting at the poor criminal. At these 



52 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

houses it costs very little to get a supper, and many of 
the scholars in consequence go there very frequently. 
A very agreeable way of passing an hour of the evening 
is to call on one of the married Professors. There, 
instead of sitting round the table and drinking tea like 
Christians, as we do in America, I have a cup of tea 
brought to me by the youngest daughter of the Lady 
Avhom I visit. She pours me out one cup at a time, 
brings me this in one hand and sugar and cream in the 
other. This is drank, with a little bit of bread and 
butter. We wait perhaps half an hour, and then obtain 
a second cup; and so on for an hour. In the mean 
time the Ladies sew or knit, even though it be Sunday 
night, and the young men talk to them. In a large tea 
party the manner is somewhat changed. A maid ser- 
vant brings round tea as with us — cake also, and what 
will perhaps surprise you, they also put on the salver 
with tea a bottle of rum — yes, my dear mother, of rum, a 
substance which the old ladies find tastes very well in 
tea. The Balls here are always on Sunday Evening. I 
have been to one out of curiosity, and seen there not 
only dances common among us, but also waltzing — an 
affair carried on in great style throughout all Germany. 
They do not require of me to dance in consideration 
of my being a foreigner and a student. . . ." 

There were other surprises in German customs for 
the young New Englander. In a letter of October 17th, 
to Andrews Norton, he had written: "I would give 
you a specimen or two of the high language of Germany, 
if it (11(1 not sound so flatly like blasphemy or vulgarity 
in English. Nay, then, I will write you some of them 



1813-1822] PREPARA TION 53 

in the order of rank, and in German. Ach, Gott, — 
used chiefly by very young girls, and very old women; 
ach, der Herr Gott; ach, allmachtigcr Gott; ach, du lieber 
Gott; Gott im Himmel; Jesus— ach, der Herr Jesus, or 
by contraction, ach, du Herr Je — Gott, Gott, Gott, Gott. 
These are some of the expressions under which the 
good and pious ladies of Gottingen express their feelings. 
The last, however, I never heard but once, and then 
from a Professor; the rest are on the tongue of every 
maiden or wife in Gottingen." 

For Bancroft's studies during this first winter, and 
for the reputation of American students the two follow- 
ing passages from letters will speak: 

To President Kirkland. 

"Gottingen, January 17, 1819. 

"... You charged me on leaving you to become a 
biblical critic and a philologian; but to be good in 
either of these branches I must devote myself particu- 
larly to one of them, and carry on the other as a mere 
secondary affair. Wliich of them shall I chose ? Your 
wish, I believe, was, that I should study with the 
thought ever on my mind, that I am to be for my life 
a student of Theology. I have now for six months 
laboured chiefly at the Greek and Latin Languages, 
making use of course of those books, which are to be 
connected with those studies. I have also laid a good 
foundation for Hebrew; and now in a short time I 
shall be ready, if you hold it expedient, to go upon the 
wide sea of oriental Literature. If my destination is to 



54 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

be that of a biblical critic rather than that of a Philolo- 
gian, Syriac must give me work for a half year, and 
Arabic for a year and an half; and in case it were possi- 
ble to fix my residence in the vicinity of a library rich 
in Arabic books and Manuscripts another half year 
would give a very good stock of knowledge of the 
language. 

"I act in all things according to your advice. In the 
mean time it is not to be concealed that neither money, 
nor, in the present state of the American public, fame 
is to be acquired by these pursuits. Perhaps too I 
shall never find one individual, who will have perse- 
verance enough to learn of me the eastern dialects. 
On the other hand, it will be very fine, to be able to 
assist in raising among us a degraded and neglected 
branch of study, which in itself is so noble, and to aid 
in establishing a thorough school of Theological 
Critics. This is after all the only certain and effectual 
way of arriving at length at the minds of the people. 
Mr. Everett will bring to you all that is valuable of 
German philology; would it not be well, if I could assist 
him in his labours not so much [in his] own branch as in 
that sister one of biblical Criticism ? 

"The plan of life, which I have adopted, indicates 
very clearly that I must become, either an instructor 
at the University, or a clergyman, or set up a high school. 
There may be no need of me at Cambridge; it may be 
either disagreeable or impracticable to found an honour- 
able school; I may expect, therefore, that I am to be- 
come a preacher. Now for all these situations classical 
literature is good; and my attention will always be 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 55 

sufficiently devoted to the learned languages to qualify 
me for one of the two first mentioned places, if oppor- 
tunity occur. Arabic and Syriac will not enable me 
to write better sermons, but will teach me to understand 
my bible more thoroughly. 

"I have said, I believe, enough to be intelligible. I 
will conform myself to your advice, and I pray that you 
will favour me with it by the first opportunity. I add 
one word about German Theology. I have nothing to 
do with it, except so far as it is merely critical. Of their 
infidel systems I hear not a word; and I trust I have been 
too long under your eye, and too long a member of the 
Theological Institution under your inspection to be in 
danger of being led away from the religion of my 
Fathers. I have too much love and esteem for my 
friends at home, and too little for those, who can 
trifle with the hopes of thousands, to suffer myself 
to be overpowered by a jest or a sophism. I say this 
explicitly, because before I left home I heard fre- 
quently expressed fears, lest I should join the German 
School. . . . 

"With Gratitude and Love 

"Geo. Bancroft." 

To President Kirkland. 

"GoTTiNGEN, February 22, 1819, 

"With every day that I pass, I hear a thousand good 
things of my countrymen, who were here before me. 
That they were eminently diligent, and full of zeal, and 
respected for their genius is only what might naturally 
have been expected ; but it has really astonished me, to 



56 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

find how much they are beloved, and how well they are 
remembered. As the large body of instructors have 
passed their lives exclusively among their books, they 
have something exceedingly cold in their deportment, 
and a person must have become quite intimate with 
them, before he can find out, that they are capable of 
feeling. But the frequency of their enquiries after 
Messrs. Everett and Ticknor, and their manner of 
speaking of them, leave no doubt of their having a real 
affection for them. The ladies seem to like Mr. 
Ticknor the best, but Mr. Everett on leaving the uni- 
versity received the degree of doctor from the philo- 
sophical faculty in a manner particularly honourable to 
him. As a friend of his I am received with open arms 
by every body, whom I visit, and enter into a possession 
of all the rights, which belonged to him, when he re- 
sided here. Eichhorn looks forward with great pleasure 
to the time of his return to America, and prophecies 
with confidence, that 'the brave fellow will make a fine 
stir when he gets home.' For myself I have to ex- 
press the greatest gratitude to Mr. Everett, for he has 
been unweariedly attentive to me, and assisted me, 
very much by his copious advice on the subject of my 
studies. . . ." 

"February 27, 1819. ... A few evenings ago I was 
inA^ited to a supper by the Prorector of the University. 
He told me to come at 7^, and accordingly I went in 
due time and reached the place before 8 o'clock. The 
company consisted entirely of Professors, Doctors, and 
the College of Lawyers, all of them tolerably advanced 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 57 

in age. On my entering, they were not yet fully col- 
lected, but by degrees they dropped in, and by nine the 
whole host was there. This first hour was most emi- 
nently tedious. The Orientalists collected in one cor- 
ner, and talked of Persia; the lawyers in another, and 
talked of I know not what; while the Prorector stalked 
from one room to the other snuffing the candles. At 
length we were called to supper, and a well lighted table 
seemed to be a cheering sight after our stupidity. I 
was placed by the side of the Prorector, with one of the 
oldest and most distinguished professors on my other 
side, who was, however, unluckily deaf. Conversation 
flagged, but as the .supper was good, the jaws were not 
idle. By and bye the wine began to operate, and the 
learned body began to buzz with great animation. Jests 
of the most noble sort were made, deep remarks and 
sage criticisms pronounced. The people spoke of their 
watches. *My watch,' cried the Prorector, 'keeps the 
best time of any one in Gottingen. I set it every hour.' 
It was sometime before the point of this was seen, but 
a heavy laugh at length came, although a little later 
than could have been desired. Schleiermacher's name 
was mentioned. 'Er macht viele Sachen unter einem 
Schley er,' said the Prorector. It was asked, what is the 
characteristick of a good Lutheran? 'To love wine,' 
said the Prorector, seizing on the bottle. 'Yes,' ex- 
claimed a venerable Professor, 'he who does not love 
wine, woman and song, remains a fool all the days of 
his life.' A little after 11 o'clock, our wine was ended, the 
skins of the Professors pretty full. We rose therefore 
from table, and each made the best of his way home." 



58 GEORGE BANCROFT [I813-I822 

The roster of a day's work written on the back of a 
map of Gottingen, which Bancroft sent to Professor 
Andrews Norton/ shows how Httle time the young 
student habitually left himself for social pleasures: 

5- 7 Hebrew and Syriac 

7- 8 Heeren in Ethnography 

8- 9 Church history by the elder Planck 
9-10 Exegesis of the N. T. by old Eichhorn 

10-11 " oftheO. T. 

11-12 Syriac by old Eichhorn 

12- 1 Dinner and walk 

1- 2 Library 

2- 4 Latin or French 

4- 5 Pliilological Encyclopedic by Dissen 

5- 7 Greek 

7- 8 Syriac 

8- 9 Tea and walk 

9-11 Repetition of the old lectures and preparation for the new. 

From the following passage in Bancroft's diary it 
may be inferred that "old Eichhorn" himself set no 
mean example for industry: 

"April 5. Eichhorn told me yesterday that he 
labours at present from 5 in the morning till 9 at night, 
that he has all his life gone on in much the same way; 
that when he was first made professor, he studied 15 
hours daily, and never experienced any inconvenience 
in respect of his health, \^^len he first began studying, 
he sate up very late at night. This he found ruinous, 
and soon abandoned it. But ever since he has risen 

' From correspondence lent by Prof. C. E. Norton. 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 59 

early, and retired early, and this he finds the only way 
of effecting much. He lays it down as a fixed principle 
that cannot be denied, that no man naturally possessed 
of a good constitution ever died of study. He does not 
deny that hard students may have died who might have 
lived, if they had led another course of life. But they 
died of anxiety, or sadness, or melancholy, of passion, 
or what you will, but never of hard study. He tells me 
that at present, at my age, when the habits of the body 
are not fully formed, twelve hours of diligent study will 
answer, and even if I do not work more than 10 
hours a day, my conscience may be at ease, but at 
the end of two years or two and a half, it will be quite 
another thing." 

To Miss Jane Bancroft. 

"GoTTiNGEN, April 14, 1819. 

"... It is a strange world we live in, and full of 
more things than are dreamt of in your philosophy. My 
life on it, you have not formed a conception of a set of 
beings like the German students. I remember even 
now the first time that I saw a party of them collected 
and I believed never to have seen any of my fellow beings 
so rough, uncivilized and without cultivation. They 
are young, and therefore wild and noisy— live chiefly 
among themselves, without mixing in society, and are 
therefore careless in their deportment, awkward and 
slovenly. Many of them wear mustachios, a thing 
almost unknown in America, and all of them make 
themselves vile by a Beard, dirty and monstrous. 



60 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

Scarcely one of them uses a hat, but insteatl of it a cap 
which sometimes can scarcely be distinguished from a 
nightcap. This business of wearing only an apology 
for a hat I find so exceedingly convenient, that I have 
fallen into it. When the scholars are assembled for a 
lecture the collection of unpleasant odours is prodigious, 
and until the professor enters the room there is a great 
noise of whistling, talking and disputing, all which how- 
ever is instantly hushed on sight of the Professor though 
generally wound up by a short but violent hiss. This 
hiss is only a signal for order and tranquility. \^1ien 
silence is thus put in possession of the throne the pro- 
fessor begins. The students have in the mean time 
opened their Portfolios, which they always carry with 
them into lectures, taken out and arranged their papers, 
mended their quills and brought every thing to order 
so that they are ready to take down every word that 
comes from the speaker's lips. A lecture lasts always 
an hour; but the instant the clock strikes it must be 
ended; for the lectures are counted from the striking 
of the clock to the striking again, and the young men 
must hasten to another professor. Sometimes a person 
is thus necessitated to stop in the middle of a paragraph, 
and I state what is positively true when I say I have 
known the lecturer break off in the middle of a sentence. 
If a professor read a moment after the hour has struck, 
be he who he may, the oldest and most learned, even 
Eichhorn himself, a curious scene of riot ensues. First 
the students shut up their books; i. e. slam them to- 
gether, the next step is to stop writing and put up their 
paper, if this do not avail, they take their inkstands 



1813-1822] PREPMIATION 61 

and strike the benches most vehemently, and then begin 
kicking the floor. All this happens in half a minute 
and the professor is always brought to reason before the 
minute is completed. It is however very seldom the 
case that any one overreaches beyond his time. You 
will from this get an idea of the manner in which a 
lecture in general is heard. On great occasioas some- 
thing extraordinary must be done. So for instance if 
Eichhorn sneeze, every scholar in the room, or at least 
the larger number, begins drumming with the feet, or 
beating the floor, us if trying its strength. I asked the 
reason of this strange procedure, and was told it 
implied as much as God bless you. If a Professor 
speak so fast that it is difficult to follow him in 
writing down what he says, they begin to scrape with 
their feet; the floor being sandy and the feet moving 
with rapidity, it produces a very grating and inter- 
rupting noise — the same is done on all occasions what- 
soever when the instructor displeases his audience. 
This language of the feet when put in words, signifies 
thou art an ass. 

" It is the custom in Gottingen for every man who can, 
to make jests in his lectures, and for every man who 
cannot to attempt it. When a good one is made, they 
clatter with their feet in token of approbation. The 
same happens at the end of any lecture that has been 
particularly good; and also at the end of the term 
when the lectures are closed. On this occasion the 
students undertake to demonstrate their love for 
the favourite professors; and the degree of love en- 
tertained for a Professor is measured by the degree 



62 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

of noise, absolute actual noise which is made and which 
often lasts several minutes and can be heard as you 
may well suppose no inconsiderable distance. Is this 
information enough of the blessed human beings among 
whom I live? ..." 

In the papers of this period which Bancroft preserved, 
there is the manuscript of a short sermon in German. 
The diary has a passage which may be taken to throw 
light upon it — and upon the progress of the student 
who had come to Gottingen only ten months before: 

"June 27, 1819. This morning I went out to a vil- 
lage in the vicinity and delivered a sermon in the 
German language. Many were astonished at my bold- 
ness in daring to do a thing of the kind, and feared I 
should fail. But I met with nothing which made me 
repent my having attempted to hold a sermon; on the 
contrary the audience were uncommonly still and at- 
tentive, and on leaving the pulpit I received the con- 
gratulations of my friends, some of whom, though un- 
known to me, had been induced by curiosity or affection 
to become my hearers. ..." 

To Kirkland and to Norton he wrote soon afterward 
of his studies in general: 

To President Kirkland. 

"Gottingen, July 6, 1819. 

" I have just had the satisfaction of receiving a letter 
from you, and hasten to thank you for the kindness of 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 63 

your communications. I feel particularly grateful for 
the degree of confidence, which you seem to repose in 
me. In respect to my studies thus far. I have added 
Hebrew and Syriac to Latin and Greek; nothing re- 
mains now but Arabic, and yet I entertain doubts of the 
expediency of undertaking it. As a learned theologian 
it is undoubtedly necessary to learn it; but the time, 
which so difficult a language would require, would hard- 
ly leave me time for becoming so thorough as I ought in 
classical literature. The idea, which you suggest, of 
establishing a high school, appears to open a fine field 
for being useful. I would gladly be instrumental in the 
good cause of improving our institutions of education 
and it is our schools, which cry out most loudly for 
reformation. To expect to devote the whole of my life 
to the duties of a school is not a very pleasing prospect. 
On my return I shall, however, be still very young, and 
could not perhaps in any way do more good than by 
embracing this scheme for a few years. It is obvious, 
that, in case of my seriously expecting any thing of the 
kind, it would be not only useful but quite necessary to 
pass some weeks at one or two of the best schools in 
Germany, and I should also think at the best of England 
or Scotland. I will think and reflect on the several 
subjects of which you speak, and hope soon to write at 
large on them. ..." 

To Andrews Norton. 

"GoTTiNGEN, July 10, 1819. 
"... What have I done since coming to Germany ? 
I have learnt much, very much. Actually more than I 



64 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

had dared to hope. German one of the most dIfficiiU 
of modern languages I have learnt; then too Latin of 
which I knew something, Greek of which I knew not a 
word on leaving America. Of Latin I have read in 
Germany, Tacitus, wholly, much of Livy, of Cicero, 
and Horace's odes, then Catullus, &c., &c. Of Greek 
I have finished Herodotus, Thucydides, something of 
Demosthenes and iEschines,the Clouds of Aristophanes, 
the Iliad, and more than half of Plato. I have com- 
menced and continued the study of Hebrew, and have 
read Genesis, half of Exodus, the books of Samuel, and 
a chapter or two here and there. I have attempted 
Syriac, and though I have not read much, yet I am so 
far advanced, that I can use a Hebrew dictionary, i. e. 
know where a Hebrew word can properly be inter- 
preted from a Syriac one. Of German theological 
works I have read, till I find there is in them everything 
which learning and acuteness can give, and that there 
is in them nothing, which religious feeling and rever- 
ence for Christianity give. They are far, very far 
before all the rest of Christendom in learning, but not in 
piety nor in talent. When you write, you may give me 
advice if you will and to any extent you please. I only 
send you accounts of myself, as in duty bound. ..." 

The month in which he wrote the letters from which 
these passages are taken was signalised for Bancroft 
by a meeting with one of his own flesh and blood. 
Late in June his brother John wrote him from Hamburg 
that he had arrived there in the East Indiaman True 
American. It was soon arranged that the Gottingen 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 65 

student should pay the sailor a visit, which was ac- 
complished to the great delight of both. A month later 
(August 25, 1819) John Bancroft wrote to George from 
Portsmouth, England, that he was on the point of sailing 
for the East Indies. On this voyage he was lost. 

In the following passage from a letter to Edward 
Everett there is the foreshadowing of Bancroft's work 
both as an historian and as a teacher: 

To Edward Everett. 

"GoTTiNGEN, August 1, 1819. 

"... 'Tis out of the question to expect, that in any 
American University whatsoever the station of Professor 
of theology would be offered me or anyone else, who had 
got his theology in Germany. Would it not be well, 
then, to add history to my studies? This has always 
interested me, suits well with my philology, and as the 
Church history must be taken, too, with my theology 
also, and I think I could become useful by means of it. 

"Several Gentlemen in Boston are desirous, I should 
become acquainted with the German Schulwesen, and 
on coming home set up a high school, on the European 
plan. I hardly know what to say to this. The labour 
of a school is nothing alluring; but it must be confessed, 
this would be the way of doing most good. A school 
might be established, and then instructors sent for from 
Germany. I would not wish, however, to give many 
years of my own life to an immediate connection with 
it. I am now between eighteen and nineteen years old, 
and before I am two and twenty shall probably be in 



66 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

America. I should be too young to begin anything, 
that would decide my destiny for life, and could per- 
haps for five years do nought better than attempt to 
establish a learned school. Will you say a word on this 
point, when you have time?" 

On September 4th, Bancroft set off from Gottingen 
with three German students on a holiday walking-trip. 
The chief places visited at first were Halle, Leipzig and 
Dresden. Conversations with Gesenius, Spohn and 
other eminent scholars are recorded in diary and letters. 
"Nothing has pleased me more," the pilgrim wrote to 
President Kirkland, "in the places I have visited than 
to find how well remembered and how highly esteemed 
Messrs. Everett and Cogswell and Ticknor universally 
are. Wherever I go, the first question is always, do 
you know them? and whenever I meet a scholar who 
did not see them, while they were in Germany, he al- 
ways thinks it necessary to give a reason for it, as that 
he was absent at the time of their calling on him, etc., 
etc." The diary for the days in Dresden — where he 
had the peculiar pleasure of seeing CogswelP — glows 
with all the enthusiasm of first acquaintance with mas- 
terpieces of painting and sculpture. From Dresden 
Bancroft proceeded to Prague, and on the way back to 
Gottingen, from which he was absent six weeks in all, 
passed through Jena and Weimar. In the first of these 
places he saw Goethe; in the second Goethe's home. 

* Of this future fellow-teacher he wrote to Andrews Norton, 
Sept. 30, 1819: "There are few men, that I have seen as yet, 
who please me so well as Cogswell." 



1S13-1S22] PREPARATION 67 

"Jena, October 12, 1819. 

"... I visited Goethe towards noon. He was talk- 
ative and affable, began at first with speaking of com- 
mon affairs. Then the discourse came on German 
philosophy. Kant was mentioned with reverence. The 
state of America became then the subject of conversa- 
tion. He seemed to think he was quite well acquainted 
with it. He spoke of several books on the country, 
of Warden's Statistical account of America, &c., &c. 
Then too, Cogswell had given him an essay on Ameri- 
can Literature, which appeared in Edinburgh. This 
essay Goethe praised much for the beauty of its style 
and for the liveliness and fancy with which it was writ- 
ten, and smiled as he mentioned the freedom with 
which he spoke of the different professions. Then the 
talk was of Cogswell, a lieher Mann — a man of great 
excellence. 

"He spoke with pleasure of the visits Cogswell had 
paid him, &c., &c. At length I, gathering courage 
from talking with him, took occasion to bring him upon 
the English poets. Byron he praised in the highest 
terms, declared himself one of a large party in Germany 
who admired him unboundedly and seized on and 
swallowed everything that came from him. Of Scott 
we had time to talk; of Wordsworth — Southey he 
knew nothing; of Coleridge, the name — had forgotten 
however his works. The author of Bertram^ was 
praised. 'The tragedy,' said Goethe, 'has many beau- 
tiful passages.' Byron, however, seemed to remain the 

' Rev. C. R. Maturin. The tragedy, on Byron's recommenda- 
tion, was produced 1816, with Kean in the leading role. 



68 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1S22 

most admired of all. After this, Goethe asked after 
my pursuits, praised me, on my mentioning them, for 
coming to Germany, and spoke a word or two on 
Oriental matters. After this he asked what way I was 
to take the next day, and finding I was going to Weimar, 
offered me at once a letter which should make me wel- 
come to the library. After a few more remarks I de- 
parted. In speaking of matters, I came into a strait 
almost as bad as poor Jennie with the Queen. Of 
Byron I said his last poem was reported to contain the 
most splendid exertions of poetical power, mixed 
with the lowest and most disgraceful indecencies. I 
did not think at the moment of Goethe's Faust. I 
mentioned, too, Byron's wife, forgetting that Goethe 
had not been happy in the married state. ... I 
spoke a word, too, of Eichhorn's writing so many 
books, forgetting that Goethe had found no end with 
writing many. 

"As for his person, Goethe is somewhat large, tho' 
not very, with a marked countenance, a fine clear eye, 
large and very expressive features, well built, and giving 
at once a favourable impression. In his manners he 
is very dignified, or rather he has a sort of dignified 
stiffness, which he means should pass for genuine dig- 
nity. He walks amazingly upright. I found him 
quite in dishabille. He had on an Oberrock — i. e. 
a surtout, but no waistcoat, a ruffled shirt, not alto- 
gether clean, a cravat like the shirt, fast inclining to 
dark complexion. His boots were of quite an ordin- 
ary cut. No Dandi would have worn them. He re- 
ceived me in the garden.'* 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 69 

"Weimar, October 13, 1819. 
" I arose early in the morning, and having engaged a 
servant to carry my knapsack, proceeded on foot from 
Jena to Weimar. The distance is not far from 10 miles. 
On reaching Weimar, I went directly to the library to 
visit the gentleman to whom Goethe had commended 
me. It was a very common man, one Krauter, but he 
was secretary at the library, and therefore best able to 
show me the matters which were worthy of attention. 
. . . After making an end at the library, I was invited by 
Krauter to go to Goethe's house, and I found (what I 
had not expected) that Goethe had written word for me 
to be presented to his son and daughter-in-law. On call- 
ing, I found only the Frau Kammerriithin von Goethe 
at home. She invited me to tea in the evening. Leaving 
her, I walked in the city. ... In Goethe's daughter- 
in-law I found a very pretty little woman, of lively 
sprightly manners, witty and agreeable and spirituelle, 
saying all things, even common ones, very prettily, 
never coming into embarrassment, knowing always 
what to say. The son seem'd rather a stupid and 
ignorant fellow. I was shown Goethe's study and 
apartments, his library, where nota bene the best German 
translations of the classics were to be found, his garden, 
his collections, Szc, &c. I left Goethe's just in time 
for the after piece at the theater, and everybody knows 
that the theater at Weimar is one of the handsomest 
in Germany. The piece represented was a farce, and 
it was laughable enough." 

Through the winter of 1819-20 Bancroft did plenty 



70 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

of hard work at Gottingen. The personal aspects of 
a second hohday journey, which came in the spring, and 
considerably extended Bancroft's knowledge of places 
and men, are described in a letter of which the greater 
portion follows: 

To Andrews Norton. 

"Gottingen, June 1, 1820. 

"I have just returned from an expedition into the 
Harz mountains, which I made during a little vacation 
that is allowed us at Ascension. 'Tis a fine feeling, 
which is gained by walking for hours together among 
the mountains. The pure air on the hills, the animating 
exercise, the perfumes arising from the wild flowers and 
the fir trees, and good company are enough to make a 
day's walk of seven or eight leagues appear as but 
necessary to sharpen the appetite and make the night's 
sleep sound. You may have heard of the Harz as 
famous for mines, and for picturesque scenery. I found 
the views often charming, very pleasant, very lovely, 
but I have not yet seen anything answering my notions 
of the sublime, nothing terribly grand or awfully bold. 
Still I had a pleasant tour, and the health that is col- 
lected in walking over the mountains, gives a feeling of 
vigour and a disposition to activity, which well repay 
the time and the fatigue. 

"There were five of us, and shall I describe to you 
my companions? I have never yet sent you accounts 
of acquaintance made in stages or picked up at inns, 
but for once in the way bear with me. Our ■)(op7]yo(: 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 71 

(for I choose to talk learned with learned people) was 
a cosmopolite — at least I cannot say to what country 
he belongs. He was born in Livonia, but of English 
parents; as a boy he was sent to England for his educa- 
tion, and as a soldier has since served in the German 
legion, and lived of course in whatever land the enemy 
appeared in. I do -not know what his mother tongue 
is. English, French, German are all one to him. 
Russian flows from his lips like honey, but Polish gut- 
turals stick in his throat and he hesitates. He of 
course knows the world well, and in England he ac- 
quired the manners of a gentleman. He is strong, but 
good natured, a soldier and a brave one, yet when not in 
his uniform, gentle and pleasant. His heart is ex- 
cellent, his morals accommodated to the latitude 
of Europe. Now that the wars are over he has come 
to Gottingen to learn liistory and mathematics, and 
if the dogs of war are let loose again, you may per- 
haps hear more of him. 

" Next comes a Polish Nobleman from the Republic of 
Krakau, poor image of a republic depending for its 
existence on the good will of the Russians. I was quite 
prepossessed in favour of Michaelowski, for one of the 
first questions he put to me was, is the memory of Count 
Pulaski honoured in America ? the noble Pole, who fell 
at the siege of Charlestown, and to whose manes 
Congress voted a monument! Our companion was a 
Pole I repeat, and he shares the feelings of his nation. 
A vehement love of his country, a longing for its inde- 
pendence, a burning and bitter hatred of the Russians, 
and an attachment to Napoleon form the leadmg traits 



72 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

in his character. He has the manners of a man, who 
has a soul, and who yet has seen httle of the poHshed 
world. He has many a coarse habit, and much of the 
grossness common to them of the North East of Europe; 
but yet his character is so natural, so unartificial, that 
it would be a pity to wish him the ways of a Frenchman. 
His morals coincide with his manners. What nature 
recommends, man must follow. 

** Our third man was a Dutchman, of good family, a 
baron Schimmelpenninck and that is not half his name. 
And a more good-natured,, meek creature neither you 
nor I have ever seen. He is strong, tall, and stout, yet 
not overbearing with his strength. His nerves are of 
immovable stuff. I never saw him laugh heartily but 
once: and yet no one is fonder of humour than he. He 
is given to irony and often says a good thing, yet with 
such gravity, that you would think him most seriously 
in earnest. He dresses well, only that his common coat 
has a yard or two more cloth than most people make use 
of; and the short jacket he sometimes wears makes him 
look like a sailor. On the whole I like our Dutchman 
mightily: he is my best friend, the only student at 
Gottingen, whom I go to see once a month, and so I 
beg you to like my description of him. He is well 
acquainted with modern history, and in conversation 
with him one may learn a good deal. He will talk on 
whatever subject you propose, provided he is master 
of it; and on all subjects he talks with the utmost frank- 
ness, and gravity, and openness, never calling for a veil 
to conceal his blushes, and never quitting table, when 
unholy things are mentioned. And yet he has a great 



1813-1822] PREPARA TION 73 

deal of moral principle for an European. . . . Indeed 
I was rejoiced to find a young man of twenty, that had 
a glimmering perception, a twilight notion 'of the high 
mystery' of chastity, though your severe morals would 
judge without mercy his principles. 

"Our fourth man was a German of high degree, his 
father being Baron of the German empire, of most 
ancient family. But this German pleased me least of 
all. He is of a class of men very common in the king- 
dom of Hanover, and very seldom seen in other parts of 
Germany, a fop after the English manner. His cravat 
is always tied in 'the Gordian knot,' his whiskers combed 
into a graceful curve, and his light hair arranged I can- 
not tell you how neatly. He is, as all young Germans, 
full of the glories of his country, will talk to you of the 
feudal times and the days of chivalry, can make you 
confess, if talking you dumb is making you confess, that 
the Deutschen are above all nations on the earth, that 
the Deutschen heroes, and men, and ladies, and armies 
are the best in the universe, and is ready to challenge any 
man, who denies that Deutsche literature excels that of 
all people and times. At the same time he is a worship- 
per of Alma Venus, knowing little and caring less for 
the donum continentiae. 

"The fifth of the band the last, the youngest and the 
least, was one Bancroft, an American by birth, and 
though already nearly two years from home all too 
American in his ways of thinking. The poor lad knew 
beforehand but little of his companions, the Dutchman 
had invited him to join the party, and destiny had 
doomed, that the American should accept it. The 



74 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

youth is in other respects well meaning enough. As he 
has a very great aversion to the grossness of the Ger- 
mans, and cannot endure the coarseness of their 
amusements and still less of their vices, there is some 
hope of his getting through the land without being 
essentially altered in his ways of thinking. Besides 
he has a singularly strong attachment to Mr. Norton of 
Cambridge, North America, and would rather lose his 
eyes or his right arm, or his tongue, or any thing else, 
that is dear to him, than lose the esteem of his friend. 
"And so the Dutchman, the Pole, the Hanoverian, 
the Teutonico-Anglico-Livonian, and the American set 
forth on their expedition. They drove as far as Herz- 
berg, a little village at the foot of the Mountains they 
were to ascend. Poor Bancroft, who had believed 
the company he was with, to be a choice selection 
of the noblest and best of the students, soon found 
that he had fallen into worse hands than the poor 
Samaritan, and yet he enlarged his knowledge of men 
and things by being with men from so various parts of 
Europe. ..." 

It is much less as a walker than as a rider that 
the surviving generation recalls Mr. Bancroft. The 
beginnings of his favourite recreation seem therefore 
worth recording: 

To Andrews Norton. 

"GoTTiNGEN, July 6, 1820. 
"... You will see a good part of my day is taken 
up in hearing lectures. This mode of study certainly 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 75 

is well calculated for those who wish to be always busy, 
for the alternation between private study and attending 
lectures makes both agreeable, and spares the health 
too. But that you may be quite sure I take good care of 
myself, I will tell you of another course I am attending. 
There is a famous riding school here, and at present I 
am one of the scholars of the celebrated Ayner, master 
of the stalls at Gottingen, and an adept in the art of 
equery and vociferation. We are obliged to ride without 
stirrups, which makes the exertion much greater, and the 
good effects of the exercise greater too. I have been at 
the school now about two months, and have learnt to 
manage a gentle horse without running the risk of getting 
my neck broken. In the meantime I know of nothing 
so effective for dispelling all collections of gloomy 
thoughts, and all twinges of discontent or homesickness, 
as an hour's ride without stirrups on a hard trotting 
horse. The quick succession of elevation and de- 
pression, to which a man is exposed, teaches him to 
choose a firm seat in the middle regions. At any rate 
I find the exercise most useful for me. I have been 
growing a little of late, and need violent motion to put 
my limbs in order and make them firm. ..." 

In the letter from which the preceding paragraph is 
taken, there is a brief, admiring descripion of Professor 
Patton from Middlebury College in Vermont, the one 
other American at Gottingen with Bancroft. "Well, at 
any rate," he says, "there were two of us here, and we 
chose to keep the 4th of July, and I am sure of it, never 
did two Americans deliver a more patriotic oration or 



76 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

more exalted poem, or think toasts more full of love of 
country than these two forlorn pilgrims did at Gottin- 
gen." The poem must have been Professor Patton's. 
Amongst Bancroft's papers I find a fervid oration of 
seven small manuscript pages, dated July 4, 1820, and 
beginning, "Countrymen, friends, sweet and elevating 
is the festival which we have now met to celebrate." 
"Come then," it ends; "let us unite in the frugal but 
friendly meal. We are few in numbers, but we have 
the hearts of freemen. The love of country shall bless 
our repast." Few, indeed — these two young enthu- 
siasts! But one of them at least had the spirit to 
join to his oration a list of twelve "Toasts for the 
4th of July, 1820, Gottingen." First came "The 
memory of Washington;" then "The President of the 
United States" [Monroe]. Four of the ten remaining 
"Sentiments" will sufficiently disclose the character 
of all: 

"6. The American Eagle. A terror to the vulture, 
may she never wound the lamb. 

"7. The speedy Abolition of Slavery. May our 
country learn to practice at home the sublime lesson she 
has taught the world. 

"8. The sweet nymph Liberty. Europe gives her 
high mountains to dwell on. America consecrates to 
her her most extended plains. 

"9. Our Country. The Asylum of the oppressed. 
May her benevolence not prove her poison. " 

There were intimations of the maturer Bancroft 
in this flowering of his youth; yet one (queries how 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 77 

large an allowance should be made for his apprehension 
of the humour in the episode. 

On the 19th of August, Bancroft wrote a long letter 
to Mr. Norton describing the methods of teaching at 
Gottingen and the habits of his fellow-students, which, 
as we have already seen, were most offensive to him. 
The beards and the fashion of kissing after a separation 
— "twice as lustily as Romeo ever kissed Juliet" — were 
among his warrants for calling the students "barba- 
rians." Mr. Norton had been questioning some of 
his young friend's previous superlatives, and in con- 
cluding his letter Bancroft thus defends himself: 

"... Now before closing this letter I must say a 
word in defence of myself against a charge, which it 
seems I have brought against myself. You have taken 
a few words I may have written too seriously. I have 
not been guilty of exaggeration. I do not remember to 
have described any man to you, otherwise than he may 
have appeared to me. Only I was afraid, that you 
had drawn too hard and unjust conclusions, from what 
I had said: and in that I should be to blame. I have 
said some tilings playfully, and have sometimes told a 
story, as it was told me, without vouching for its truth; 
but I have never made an assertion which I was doubt- 
ful about; and never expressed a judgment, which I 
did not feel was right. And from your letters all along 
it has appeared to me, that you have on the whole under- 
stood me, as I should wish to be understood. I may 
have made some false conclusions. If I heard a man 
cursing and swearing, I inferred he reverenced God 



78 GEORGE BANCROFT [I813-I822 

very little: perhaps an unjust conclusion. If they told 
me, the man never goes to church, I thought he cared 
little for religion; applicable in America but not in 
Germany. If I caught a man on a morning call in a 
nightgown and slippers without breeches on, I judged 
him a sloven; altogether falsely; for give him a clean 
shirt and a new suit of clothes, and he will dress very 
respectably for a public occasion. This is pretty much 
all the retraction I wished to make ; I have always taken 
heed to my words, and that will always do 

"your truth loving George." 

Within a month from the time of writing this letter 
Bancroft received his Doctor's degree. The final ex- 
amination and the ceremony which followed it, are de- 
scribed in the ensuing passages: 

"GoTTiNGEN, September 2, 1820. 

"I have just returned from the faculty in Gottingen. 
For the first time in my life I have been decorated with 
small clothes and silk stockings, and for the first time 
too, have been talking Latin publicly. 'Hail, native 
language!' I may well say now, and be thankful that 
my trial is over. In a word I have been examined this 
afternoon by mighty men for the degree of Doctor in 
Philosophy, and now nothing remains for me to do but 
to appear in public and take the oath of allegiance to the 
University, in order to become as good and regular a 
Doctor as any that have been coined in these latter 
days; but I will try and relate the history of the whole 
matter. The candidate for a degree writes two papers 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 79 

which he presents to the faculty. In the one he declares 
his wish to be admitted to an examination; in the other 
he gives a short history of his life. These being com- 
municated to each member of the Academic Senate, a 
meeting is called of the faculty for the purpose of trying 
the powers of the candidate, and examining him in those 
departments of science to which he has particularly 
attended. To-day was appointed for me. At 4 o'clock 
I entered the house of the Dean of the faculty, Prof. 
Eichhorn, and after waiting a few minutes was ushered 
into the room where eight venerable men were as- 
sembled. A chair was placed for me. Mr. Eichhorn 
then began the ceremony by addressing to me a short 
speech in Latin of course, and after speaking a few 
words introductory to the examination, ended by saying 
he should examine me in ancient history, in Hebrew and 
Arabic, and invited his colleague, the celebrated Mit- 
scherlich, to examine me in Greek. He then com- 
menced the examination by questions relating to the 
cities of Phenicia and the fate of Tyre. He then gave 
me the Hebrew Bible and requested me to translate the 
23rd chapter of Isaiah, which is a most difficult chapter. 
After this an Arabic poem was put into my hands, which 
I also translated and explained. Then one half of my 
examination was over. Wine and cake were presented, 
and these being tasted the work proceeded. Mr, 
Mitscherlich made me a short speech in which he an- 
nounced his intention of ascertaining how much Greek 
I knew, and in order to effect that, he gave me an ode 
of Pindar to translate. Now Pindar, you [know] is of 
all authors the most difficult. But as I had studied him 



80 . GEORGE BANCROFT [I813-I822 

a good deal of late, I succeeded in satisfying the good 
professor in my answers. The ode which he selected 
was the fourth Nemean ode, which commenced with, 
'The best Physician for labours that are ended is hilar- 
ity.' The manner of interpreting was as follows : First 
the sentence was read, then each individual word which 
had any difficulty was explained, reduced to its primi- 
tive root, and its several meanings mentioned. This 
done, the construction of the words was told, and then 
the passage was translated into Latin. All this is done 
in Latin, which is the only language allowed at an 
examination, or at any public solemnities of the Uni- 
versity. After the passage is thus translated, if it con- 
tain any allusions to mythology, these are enquired after, 
if any grammatical difficulties, they must be cleared up, 
if any incorrected readings, they must be corrected. 
Of the ode of Pindar, about thirty lines were inter- 
preted in this way. By this time it was past six, so I 
was desired to withdraw for a few moments. The 
deliberation was held as to the event of the trial. I was 
soon summoned to appear, when the Dean made a short 
speech again, declaring the satisfaction of the faculty 
with the appearance I had made, setting forth his readi- 
ness to create me a Doctor as soon as I should have dis- 
puted in public, and adding his congratulations on his 
own part and that of the faculty, on the honour I was 
about to obtain, and then I was dismissed. Next week 
on Saturday I am to appear in public and defend against 
two or more opponents the theses which are to be 
printed in the course of the week. Then, after taking 
an oath to honour the University, &c., I am to receive 



1S13-1822J PREPARATION 81 

a diploma in due form and order, as Doctor of Philos- 
ophy. ..." 

"GoTTiNGEN, September 16, 1820. 

"My Dearest Uncle: 

"Do you remember the good story you used to tell 
me about the honest countryman of Stow, who, after 
long sighing for the honour, was at length made Justice 
of the Peace; and then you know as a neighbour saluted 
him in a friendly way by the plain title of Mr., he 
deigned no answer, but collecting himself most proudly, 
exclaimed after a long pause, 'and pray why not 
"Squire!"' So now if Miss Murray or Miss Hall or 
any of the elect of Lancaster, should happen to speak of 
George Bancroft, or Mr. George, I pray you to rebuke 
them gravely and ask, 'pray why not Doctor!' Last 
Saturday I was made Doctor of Philosophy and Master 
of Arts according to the strictest forms of the law. The 
customs of the place and the statutes of the University 
render it necessary for the candidate to proceed thus: 
In the course of the week he prints several propositions 
which he declares himself ready to defend in public. 
These are generally of a paradoxical nature,, such as 
few men are disposed to believe, and on new and unusual 
subjects. These being printed and distributed, two 
or more opponents are appointed to enter the lists and 
oppose the candidate. The day for this intellectual 
warfare being appointed, the candidate proceeds early 
in the morning, dressed fully in black, in small clothes 
and silk stockings, to arrange the business of the day. 
He drives in a carriage first to his opponents. These he 



82 GEORGE BANCROFT [I813-1822 

takes with him to his room where breakfast is waiting 
for them. The morning repast being ended, he con- 
ducts them in the carriage as before, to the hall of the 
University where they take the places appointed for 
them — opposite the desk destined for the candidate. 
Then he drives to the Dean of the faculty, and invites 
him to appear and preside at the ceremony. In the 
mean time theses are distributed to every one that comes 
to hear the dispute. The Dean and he who is to be 
dubbed Doctor arrive. The Dean leads him to his 
place where he is to stand firmly and await all attacks. 
First, however, he holds a speech which commonly 
lasts from ten to fifteen minutes. The Dean is at pres^ 
ent the celebrated Mr. Eichhorn, one of the most learned 
men in the world. He led me to the Desk and from that 
moment no word might be uttered except in Latin. 
Then I delivered a speech which lasted about twelve 
minutes and this gave me time to collect myself. The 
oration pleased, though some thought I spoke too 
theatrically. 'Tis not the custom here to declaim, but 
I chose to do it as an American, and for the sake of trying 
something new to the good people. After the discourse 
was ended, I called on one of my opponents to contra- 
dict any one of the propositions I had asserted. He 
chose one about a line of Horace.^ It may seem to 
you in Lancaster of very little consequence whether one 
word or another be used there — but here we are bound 

'Of the nine theses to be defended by "Georgius Bancroft, 
Massachusettsensi-Vigoniensis," as' he is described on the 
leaflet preserving them, the seventh reads: "Bentheii conjec- 
tura numrnum pro nomen in Horatii Epist. ad Pis. v. 59, reji- 
cienda, altera tamcn procudere pro producere adoptanda." 



1813-1822] PREPARATION S3 

to hold it a sacred duty to render every ancient author 
as correct as possible. The young Gentleman who 
opposed me is son of the King's preacher at Dresden, a 
very well educated man. AVe talked a full half hour 
about the true reading with liveliness— I might almost 
say acrimony. The Professor of eloquence, Mitscher- 
lich, who has published an edition of Horace, was all 
along on my side. We could hear him exclaiming 
against the arguments of my adversary as of no mo- 
ment, and encouraging me by approving mine. The 
dispute with Ammon being at an end, I invited Dr. 
Hoch to oppose me upon another of my theses. He 
is an excellent man, already well known for his learning. 
The question related to the language of the earliest in- 
habitants of Greece, and was treated with proper cool- 
ness and deliberation. It is a difficult subject, as the 
testimony of early writers is so contradictory upon it. 
This question wa^ discussed for about twenty minutes, 
and then the battle was ended and the field remained 
to me without any one to dispute my right to it. My 
peroration followed, and in this I was first obliged, ac- 
cording to the customs of ceremony, to say a word for the 
King, for the Duke of Cambridge and for the University. 
Then, turning to the Professors, I thanked them for 
their kindness to me during my stay at Gottingen, said 
farewell to my friends and fellow students, and then 
begged the Dean to confer on me the honour I had 
sought for. Mr. Eichhorn mounted the desk, held a 
speech to the audience, said some civil things to me, 
added his hopes and wishes for my welfare in life, and 
then called on the Beadle of the University to read me 



84 GEORGE BANCROFT [IS13-I822 

the Doctor's oath. This being administered, I was 
called on to ascend two steps higher, and my diploma 
was presented me. The audience dispersed, each pro- 
fessor came up and congratulated me on the successful 
event of my trial, then turned away and departed. The 
Dean I conducted home in my carriage, and I remained 
a Doctor in Philosophy, and was then, am now, and 
ever shall be your loving nephew." 

The Gottingen degree secured, Bancroft looks to the 
future, and writes thus of his plans: 

To President Kirkland. 

"Gottingen, September 17, 1820. 

"Another semester has just been closed, and now my 
course at Gottingen is finished. I had hoped to have 
received a few lines from you, encouraging me in my 
purpose of joining the University of Berlin for the 
winter. But though I have not heard from you, yet 
the advantages I shall enjoy there, are certainly so 
great, that there is little room for hesitation. For 
ancient literature we have at Gottingen three professors ; 
but the eldest is lazy, and does not do his duty; the 
youngest is a beardless youth of fine promise; but as yet 
he is only growing learned; while the third, the most 
learned of the whole, little Dissen, is so sickly and so 
easily disturbed and brought low, that his good will 
exceeds his powers of action. (He is now engaged with 
the new edition of Pindar, and promised me he would 
make a present of it to the Cambridge library, when 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 85 

completed.) Now at Berlin I am sure of Boeckh, who 
is perhaps the best scholar in Germany; and Wolf, 
though eminently slothful, reads lectures in winter; 
and Buttmann, who is now writing a copious Greek 
Grammar, exercises the young philologians in inter- 
preting the classics. Apart from all this the lectures 
here are so calculated as to return every two years, and 
having remained here two years, I hardly know what 
lectures to take, were I to continue my stay during the 
winter. I go from Gottingen without much regret. 
The people here are too cold and unsocial, too fond of 
writing books and too incapable of conversing, having 
more than enough of courtesy, and almost nothing of 
actual hospitality. I admire their industry; but they 
do not love labour; I consider their vast erudition with 
astonishment; yet it lies as a dead weight on society. 
The men of letters are for the most part ill bred ; many 
of them are altogether without manners. Here is 
Harding, whose name is widely spread as the discoverer 
of a planet and a capital observer of the stars; but he 
has not a notion of what a gentleman ought to do on 
earth; the renowned Staudlin, the cleverest of all the 
Gottingen theologians, talks quite as vulgarly as a 
common man of the ' cursed affair of the queen,' and the 
* hellish bad situation of the ministers; ' and our excellent 
Heeren, who has written the most acute book that has 
ever been written on the commerce of the ancients, 
hardly knows how to hold commerce with men of his 
own time. One of the most copious of the professors 
longs to get some petty ofRce as clerk at Hanover, and 
often exclaims, * could I once get out of this hell on earth, 



86 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

I would never write a book again.' As it is he writes 
two octavos a year. And Eichhorn, than whom I have 
never seen a more amiable or a kinder man, speaks 
often of his labours, in a manner, which does not in- 
crease one's respect for him, and seems to think by 
devoting himself so exclusively to books he has lost the 
chance of enjoying life, and partaking of the pleasures 
of the idle. All these things seem to justify the Germans 
of higher rank in the little respect, with which they 
treat the learned; but they correspond poorly with the 
childish ideas I had formed in America of the supe- 
rior culture and venerable character of the wise in 
Europe.* . . . 

"And now that the harvest is gathering and the leaves 
of the forests falling for the third time since I left home, 
I am reminded that I am growing older. Pythagoras, 
in his division of life, lets the fair days of boyhood con- 
tinue, till the twentieth year is ended. I like his divi- 
sion, it leaves me yet a few days for the thoughtless 
gayety of boyhood. And then the sun of the opening 
springtime of life will have gone down for me, and the 
hours, which are passing over me, will soon bring on the 
time for thinking with sobriety and acting with manli- 
ness. In the mean time I know you will excuse me if 
I have often written carelessly or as a boy. The day 

' The Latin oration mentioned in the letter to Bancroft's uncle 
is before me. It begins with the salute, following no doubt a 
form virtually prescribed, "Prorector magnifice, Eques excel- 
lentissime, Decane summe colende, Professores amplissimi 
doctissimi; Commilitones carissimi, Amici suavissimi." This 
and Bancroft's privately expressed opinion of the Gottingen com- 
munity are in interesting contrast. 



/ 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 87 

of my departure from Gottingen is fixed for Tuesday. 
Among the letters which my acquaintance and friends 
here have given me, I find some to several of the most 
eminent literary men at Berlin. I feel confident of 
passing the following month pleasantly and usefully. 
How thankful ought I then be to you, to whose kind 
protection I owe all the high advantages, which I en- 

joy." 

The journal provides a picturesque glimpse of Ban- 
croft's departure from Gottingen: 

"On Tuesday the 19th of September, I finished my 
residence at Gottingen. Two years have passed rapidly 
away in the stillness and activity of a student's life, and I 
think I may look back on them as on years which have 
been usefully employed. I had formed a plan of travel- 
ling to Berlin with two Grecians — Maurus, from Con- 
stantinople, and Polyzoides from Thessalonica. Many 
of their countrymen were desirOus of accompanying us 
a few miles, that they might delay as long as possible the 
moment destined for a parting embrace. About 9 we 
left the walls and spires of Gottingen behind us; we 
had taken leave of all our friends, and now we bade 
adieu to their city, to its pleasant walks, the rich vales 
around it, and its magnificent scientific institutions. 
Farewell, oh! Georgia Augusta, and mayst thou long 
continue to bring forth offspring worthy of thy pleasant 
glory. 

"At noon we reached Nordheim. Here we dined for 
the last time in company with our Grecian friends. The 



88 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

hour at table was indeed moving. The welfare of our 
friends and our countries was drunk with enthusiasm. 
After dinner a Greek war song was sung, which ani- 
mated every heart. Young Blastos from Chios, a 
pleasant little fellow, whom I was especially fond of, 
could hardly restrain his feelings. At length Psylas 
from Athens arose, and addressed his Grecian brethren 
in a short song, animating them to exertion and patriot- 
ism. Then followed the last embrace, the parting kiss 
of friendship, and lost in pleasant reminiscences, we 
continued our way towards Brunswick in silence and 
reflection." 

Arrived at Berlin the young student presents his 
letters of introduction, and notes in his journal many 
impressions of the scholars he meets. A long letter to 
his father, October 20, 1820, discusses plans for the 
remainder of the stay in Europe, and possible methods 
for securing the required funds. A single brief passage, 
throwing light on past and future, must be quoted: 
"From the earliest years of childhood, from the moment 
of my entering with you the chaise, that was to take us 
to Exeter, I have met with benefactors and friends. 
The benevolence of an uncle, whom I delight to honour 
and love, assisted me in the years of college life, and as 
I was entering on more advanced studies under narrow 
and discouraging circumstances, I have been enabled 
to visit the best universities of Europe. This is heart- 
moving and exalting. Encouragement, such as I have 
received, must give a new impulse to exertion, and I 
feel as if something more than a moderate degree of 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 89 

usefulness may hereafter be expected of me. When I 
return I shall be willing to serve in any station, which 
those, to whom I owe so much, may think most suitable 
for me." 

A fortnight later he writes specifically to his chief 
benefactor about his studies at Berlin: 



To President Kirkland. 

"Berlin, November 5, 1820. 

"... I have already been here about six weeks, and 
find abundant cause of joy for having come here. The 
character of the men of letters is quite the reverse of the 
character of the Gottingen Professors. There an 
abhorrence is felt for all innovations ; here the new, that 
is good or promises to lead to good, cannot be too soon 
adopted. At Gottingen the whole tendency of the 
courses is, to make the students learned, to fill their 
memories with matters of fact; here the grand aim is 
to make them think. At Gottingen experience stands 
in good repute, and men are most fond of listening to her 
^ voice; but at Berlin experience is a word not to be pro- 

nounced too often ; speculation is looked on as the prime 
source of truth. At G. the men are engaged in growing 
learned and writing useful books, which demonstrate 
their erudition; at Berlin the professors are perhaps 
quite as learned, but more accustomed to reflect; and 
you may find many of their books, to have written which 
a prodigious degree of erudition was required, and which 
yet do not contain a single citation. Certainly Gott- 



90 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

ingen is the best place to gather genuine learning; but I 
hardly think, a man would learn there how to use it 
properly. . . . 

"As to my studies this winter, they will be chiefly a 
continuance of my former philological ones, to which 
I add a little philosophy and French and Italian. I 
need not say, how fine the schools of Prussia are; they 
are acknowledged to be the finest in Germany. Here 
in Berlin a great many new ideas are going into applica- 
tion; and the indistinct forebodings of Pestalozzi, and 
the eloquent discourses of Fichte have not been without 
lasting fruits. I need not assure you how happy I am 
in having an opportunity of studying the science of 
education in a city, where it has been the subject of so 
much discussion and where the Government have done 
so much, have done everything they could do, to realize 
the vast advantages about to result from the reform in 
the institutions of instruction. No Government knows 
so well how to create Universities and high schools as the 
Prussian. The new Academy at Bonn rivals already 
the oldest Universities. I have taken a course of lec- 
tures with Schleiermacher on the science of education; 
it is the most interesting which I have as yet attended. 
He brings to his subject a mind sharpened by philo- 
sophical meditation and enriched with the learning of 
all ages and countries. He applies to his subject all his 
vast acquaintance with the different systems of ethics, 
and with the human mind; his language is luminous, 
elegant and precise; his delivery is I think almost per- 
fect. I honour Schleiermacher above all the German 
scholars, with whom it has been my lot to become ac- 



1813-1822] PREPARA TION 91 

quainted. He abounds in wit and is inimitable in 
satyre: yet he has a perfectly good heart, is generous 
and obliging. I think him acknowledged to be the 
greatest pulpit orator in Germany. Amnion, who is 
sometimes named with him, is by no means his equal. 
In person S. is small, very small, mis-shaped, and in 
general without any claim to a good appearance except 
an expressive countenance and an eye that flashes fire 
continually. Yet he is exceedingly rapid in his motions, 
,and walks with the agility and vivacity of a boy. A few 
evenings ago I was at his house : a stupid German Pro- 
fessor, who had been to seek his fortune at St. Peters- 
burg was there too, a perfect boor in his manners, and 
talking incessantly, though he did not know how to con- 
verse properly. As he went away Schleiermacher 
showed him to the door; but immediately on returning 
from lighting him out, the whole company fell upon the 
Doctor, to know how he could invite such a cub to a 
family supper. His wife seized him with strong hands 
by the collar, and began shaking the little philosopher 
most playfully. He cried for mercy and forbearance, 
jumped two feet high, demanding to be heard — and was 
at length heard and pardoned. 

"Besides the public schools there is at Berlin a private 
institution, which promises to become very useful. Ten 
young men, animated by the eloquence and patriotism 
of Fichte, formed a plan some years ago of establishing 
a school after the new principles. Each of them chose 
a peculiar branch, in which he was to perfect himself, 
and which he was afterwards to teach. Three of them 
went in the mean time to live with Pestalozzi and become 



92 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

acquainted with his principles from the man himself. 
An ardour and a perseverance, such as the young men 
have manifested, deserve to meet with the most decided 
success. I find it quite instructive to observe their 
institution from time to time; they know how to unite 
gymnastic exercises, music and the sciences; and this 
is the mode of educating, which Plato has extolled as 
the perfection of the art. In this way I have excellent 
means of becoming acquainted with the old and the new 
ways of teaching in Germany; the subject deserves at- 
tention for its practical importance; and becomes 
highly attracting, when regarded in a philosophical 
point of view. 

"My other courses are with Boeckh, Hegel and Wolf, 
all names of the first rank; though Boeckh is very far 
from having the genius of Wolf, or Hegel from having 
the clearness of either.^ ..." 

The learned Wolf and his daughter thus appear in 
the final pages of the journal for 1820: 

"December 21. Wolf talked to me about himself and 
his daughter with the greatest openness. The Queen, 
said he, passed thro' Halle, and was at a large company 
there. She selected his daughter for a companion, 
saying, 'Come, and sit by me, my child. I hear you 
know so vastly much English. Did not you find it 

' In a letter of December 28, 1820, Bancroft wrote to Edward 
Everett: "I took a philosophical course with Hegel. But I 
thought it lost time to listen to his display of unintelligible 
words." 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 93 

hard ?' 'Not at all, your Majesty.' ' I thought the th 
and other sounds very hard/ said the Queen. ' I made 
nothing of them,' said the little girl. ' Wliy ? How did 
you learn English, then?' 'Papa taught it me in the 
water when I was five years old.' ' Taught it you in the 
water,' cried out the Queen in astonishment, 'What 
does that mean?' 'When he went to bathe,' answered 
the girl, etc., etc. 'In short,' said Wolf, 'when I went 
to bathe, I took my little daughter with me, and made 
her sit behind a screen, and while bathing, I used to 
call out an English word which she wrote down and then 
another and another, till I had taught her all the sounds 
of the English in several succeeding lessons.' I was 
quite taken with the good natured talkativeness of the 
old man, and the fondness with which he dwelt on his 
knowledge of English. The same daughter of Wolf 
made, when she was but 14, an abridgement of Walker, 
in order to become sure of the pronunciation of each 
word; a vast undertaking for a girl, and so young a girl, 
rivalled only by the zeal which induced Schlozer to copy 
a Russian dictionary of some hundred octavo pages, at 
a time when it was impossible to purchase one." 

The beginning of 1821 is marked with the best of 
resolutions : 

"January 1, 1821. A new year has again com- 
menced. It is the third which I have kept in the land 
of strangers. When I think of the manner in which I 
spent the past year, I believe I may be contented with 
the progress I have made. Yet much yet remains to 



94 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

be done, and the coming [year] is perhaps to have a more 
decided influence on my character and manners than 
the past. Some resokition must be made for the regula- 
tion of my time and conduct, and let me begin with 
resolving — 1. To rise earlier than I have formerly 
done. Half past five or six is a proper hour for winter, 
except when something unusual prevents me from going 
to bed in good season. 2. I must exert myself to obtain 
a good English style, and to do that must write much and 
with care. Especially be the letters sent home for the 
future, written with attention. 3. This year, especially 
in the following month, I must strive to learn to use the 
French language with propriety and ease. 4. Italian 
must be learnt thoroughly. 5. I think it would be high- 
ly useful to take lessons in dancing for the sake of wear- 
ing off all awkwardness and uncouthness." 

A family letter on New Year's Eve gave a minute de- 
scription of this unfamiliar object to a young New 
Englander of Bancroft's generation — a Christmas-tree. 
Duly following, there was another celebration recorded, 
with the talk accompanying it, in the journal : 

"January 2, 1821. The Germans celebrate the last 
evening in the year. Sylvester evening the members 
of each family collect together, unless in large companies, 
and pass the time in the merriest manner possible. 
Mme. Schleiermacher assured me that 'tis the pleasant- 
est and gayest night in the whole year. They always re- 
main together till the midnight hour has struck, and the 
new year has fairly entered. Then they bid it welcome, 
and continue their mirth till nature calls for repose. . . . 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 95 

" I spent the evening at the Countess America Bern- 
storff's/ a lady whose virtues I so much admire. On 
entering, I found Sir George Rose^ there and family. 
We had a charming evening, all were so pleasant and 
willing to be happy. First a little discourse with the 
Countess, then a little dance, then a few words with the 
Count, whom I now for the first time saw, entertained 
me at first. Bye-and-bye I entered without knowing it 
into a most lively conversation with Sir George Rose 
on the state of religion and theological science in 
Germany. He had paid great attention to the subject. 
In our conclusions we united : namely, that the Germans 
united the most foolish credulity with the most audacious 
scepticism. Sir Geo. spoke to me of his own habits in 
his family. He assured [me] that after breakfast he 
assembles his household, and the Chaplain reads the 
short prayers. Then he himself reads to them a 
chapter from the Old and a chapter from the New 
Testament. These he explains, too; and if any points 
need a learned commentary, he calls on the Chaplain for 
his exposition. 'For,' said he, 'I think it the highest 
duty and it ought to be the greatest delight of parents to 
teach religion to their children. None but the parents 
should give a child its first ideas of God and of Chris- 
tianity.' I was much delighted with Sir George's zeal 
and religious spirit, tho' grieved at his too strict attach- 
ment to the peculiar tenets of the Church of England. 

1 Daughter of Gen. Riedesel, commander of Brunswick troops 
in the American Revolution. She was born, 1780, in New York; 
hence the name America. 

'British Minister at Berhn. 



96 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

Our dialogue continued for a long time, and we seemed 
to forget that dancing was going on all the while in the 
adjoining chamber. At last we were interrupted, and 
I joined the younger part of the company. Presently 
the musicians played a waltz. I felt a desire to dance 
and ventured to do so. I got through the waltz for the 
first time in my life in a correct and easy manner. Then 
followed the Cotillon, which is a very long but very 
amusing dance. This too I ventured to dance for the 
first time. All things went off pleasantly, and all seemed 
happy. The dance ended ; the doors were thrown open 
and behold the tables spread for supper. A frugal but 
excellent and even elegant repast crowned the pleasures 
of the evening." 

A long passage in a letter to Dr. Kirkland from 
Berlin, February 1, 1821, is devoted to Wolf, in admira- 
tion of his mental powers and erudition, yet lamenting 
his lack of dignity of character and purity of morals. 
A fortnight later Bancroft acknowledges in a letter to 
Norton his own inability to see any beauty or attractive- 
ness in the ballet, of which he had just seen a speci- 
men performance at the end of Rossini's Tancred. 
Before the end of February, he left Berlin, and by way of 
Leipzig, Weimar, Frankfort, and Heidelberg proceeded 
toward Paris. A letter from Heidelberg to his sister 
Lucretia tells of his parting from friends in Berlin, 
"the incomparable Wolf" — to whom he gave a copy of 
his father's "Life of Washington" — the Baron von 
Savigny, and others. Returning from farewell visits, 
he found in his room a letter from Baron von Humboldt. 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 97 

"He had sent me a very polite note enclosing a work of 
his as a keepsake, and a letter of introduction to his 
brother at Paris; who is, you know, the most distin- 
guished of all living travellers. He desired at the same 
time to have my address in America, that we may here- 
after carry on a correspondence. This your 'little 
brother' held quite an honourable distinction. Other 
good men and famous in their vocation I will not name 
to you. The last of all whose friendly hand was clasped 
in mine was Schleiermacher. He is the first pulpit 
orator in Germany, and besides that a most learned 
scholar and acute Philosopher. With him and his 
family I spent the last hours of my social life at Berlin. 
At his house I had frequently been during the winter, 
and had heard his lecture[s] and listened to his conversa- 
tion always with instruction and admiration. And 
now, nothing remained but a few hours for unquiet 
sleep and then I was to turn my back on Berlin. ..." 
At Leipzig Bancroft saw Spohn again, and other 
scholars. From Kosen on March 6th he wrote Pro- 
fessor Levi Hedge an elaborate description of the 
Schulpforte gymnasium at which he had placed young 
Frederic Henry Hedge. The letter, in its relation to 
Bancroft's own career, is noteworthy for its evidences 
of a close study of German educational methods. At 
Weimar there was time for two visits to Goethe. One 
of them is thus described in the diary : 

"Weimar. March 7, 182L 
" I was with Goethe for a half hour to-day. I felt the 
vast difference between [him] and the many scholars 



98 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

whom I have lately seen. Goethe has the ease of a gentle- 
man, speaks with liveliness and energy, but does not seem 
to take any longer a lively interest in the affairs of the 
world. I tried to bring him to talk of the German poets, 
and mentioned Tieck, but Goethe remained silent. I 
mentioned the Schlegels; he observed merely that they 
had written many pretty things. Byron's Don Juan 
Goethe has read and admired its humour. The humour 
of the rimes, said he, is capable only in your language 
where words differently written are often pronounced 
alike. This peculiarity of your language has been culti- 
vated and exercised by a series of comic writers. Swift, 
etc., etc. Goethe spoke of Humboldt's Agamemnon with 
high praise. 'I still read in it and derive new instruc- 
tion from it.' Goethe asked me about the new hall 
at Berlin, about the famous masquerade at court, spoke 
of Sir George Rose and his handsome daughters. I 
saluted him from Wolf. He added merely, that Wolf 
had given him the pleasure of his company for a few 
days the last autumn. Goethe spoke of the progress 
of colonisation in America and of the agreeable manner 
we have in America of setting before each advertise- 
ment a little cut denoting its subject, as a house, a ship, 
a horse. He thought it a very excellent custom. He spoke 
in praise of the riches of Berlin in the arts, the thriv- 
ing state of sculpture, etc., etc. He spoke of Cogswell, ad- 
ding that he had sent several little things to him in Amer- 
ica by way of Perthes and Besser at Hamburg. Goethe's 
appearance is that of a healthy and active old man. His 
countenance is thin but shows no signs of decay. 
"Goethe is still very industrious. He dictates often 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 99 

for several hours in succession, lives very secluded, as- 
sociating with none of the inhabitants of Weimar, ap- 
pearing neither at Court nor in any parties. When any 
ideas arise in his mind he dictates them as a fragment, 
the end of which no one can conceive of, and throws 
them aside, till accident or inclination brings him again 
on the same subject. He has by him often works 
nearly finished, others in good progress and others just 
commenced on, so that Prof. Riemer says of him, he 
brings forth like the mice, who carry about in the womb 
young ones ready for delivery, and other just beginning 
to exist. At present Goethe has finished a volume of 
Wilhelm Meister, Wander-Jahren, and is also engaged 
with his ' morphologic.' 

"I ought to mention that Goethe praised Schlegel's 
translation of Shakspeare and spoke of the delight he 
had taken in a late perusal of Julius Cesar. ..." 

On March 24th Bancroft wrote from Heidelberg to 
Dr. Kirkland a letter of which but a single sentence 
needs to be copied: "After long consideration I have 
determined to profit for four or six weeks by the learning 
and affability of the Heidelberg scholars, and then go to 
Paris, where I hope letters will await me, which are to 
decide whether I may yet remain some time in Europe, 
or am to return to America in the fall." The Heidel- 
berg scholar from whom most was to be expected was 
the historian Schlosser, yet Professor Sloane has said 
that Bancroft "was scarcely conscious of his influence."^ 
Letters written in April show him to be still in Heidel- 

* See Century Magazine, January, 1887. 

LOfC. 



100 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

berg, and one of them, to Professor Levi Frisbie, de- 
scribing the philosophers and philosophies most fol- 
lowed in Germany, reiterates Bancroft's own aversion 
from Hegel. The records of Bancroft's experiences in 
Paris begin May 5, 1821. It was a bitter disappoint- 
ment to find awaiting him there no letters throwing 
light upon his immediate plans. The following portion 
of a letter sets forth his anxiety on this point: 

To President Kirkland. 

"Paris, May 6, 1821. 

. . . "If it be desired I am ready to return home in 
autumn; and there doing what I can for the furtherance 
of classic studies, I might still gain much time for pri- 
vate study, and might almost as well as in Europe build 
up a little on the foundations which I have laid. I 
believe I have knowledge enough of Latin and Greek to 
venture on teaching them, at least to beginners, in the 
scientific manner applied with such success among the 
Germans: I have visited, too, the chief schools in that 
land, and have studied carefully their internal organ- 
isation and the cyclus of their studies. Were I to 
return in a few months I might still be able to serve the 
cause of letters well though humbly; till riper years and 
maturer studies fit me for better. 

" May I then urge you to favour me with a few lines ? 
They would serve to govern me in making my resolu- 
tions; and would relieve me from the state of uncertain- 
ty as to your wishes, which I am now in. Indeed I 
believe you have long ere this time done so; and con- 
trary winds or misfortunes of the sea may have de- 



1813-1822] • PREPARATION 101 

tained the vessel which was to bring me, what I am so 
anxious to obtain. When it arrives I shall welcome it 
with joy, be its contents what they may; be it that I am 
encouraged to continue and bring to an end the pil- 
grimage towards the shrines of Art and the altars, on 
which the fire of science is ever burning; or be it, that 
I am to forget the attractions of Europe in the desire of 
returning to my country and am soon to be in person 
there where my heart has ever been. ..." 

On the day this letter was written Bancroft met 
August Wilhelm Schlegel, about to return to Bonn with 
Sanskrit types and an accumulation of literary treasures, 
and dined with an American household, in company 
with Washington Irving, "He is very amiable," says 
the diary, "and altogether unassuming. He is not 
talkative, but converses leisurely and thoughtfully; and 
his remarks are distinguished by their intrinsic worth 
and their grace." By virtue of the excellent introduc- 
tions from Wilhelm von Humboldt and others Bancroft 
was soon enjoying some of the most interesting ex- 
periences recorded in his journal. 

"Paris, May 7, 1821. 
"... A little before three I called on Baron Hum- 
boldt, who had invited me to join him at that hour, 
and attend a session of the ' Institut de France.' We 
entered a large and spacious building appropriated 
to that purpose, and passing through the hall to the 
library, I was ushered into the most learned assembly 
of the world. The members were sitting around a 
table, which extended through the room in the form 



102 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

of a hollow square. They were all past the years 
of early manhood; many of them seemed on the 
very threshold of the grave, alike venerable for their 
literary merit and their years. Mr. Cuvier was reading 
a communication as we entered. He is a man of still 
a very healthy and manly appearance, looking much 
younger than I could have expected from his long 
celebrity. He is quick in his motions, especially in those 
of his very fine sharp eyes. He looked like a man of 
the world; and wore the dress of a Gentleman, as if he 
were accustomed to it. Him followed Mr. D'Alembert, 
the astronomer, who read a long essay about the bones 
of Descartes. It seems, the Institute wished to honour 
the memory of that philosopher: and voted him a 
funeral, in which all the members followed his collected 
bones to their new grave. Now somebody has been 
asserting, that these were not the actual bones of Des- 
cartes; that the teeth were not the genuine teeth; and 
a great many other things equally important. So the 
Astronomer entertained the sage assembly for a con- 
siderable time to prove that these were the very bones 
of Descartes, which the Institute had so solemnly de- 
posited in the new sepulchre. A very important subject 
for the collected wisdom and erudition of France to 
discuss! Some other papers were read. One member 
has the right to interrupt another, to correct him when 
in an errour. This was often done, and led to very 
lively discussions. Cuvier was engaged in one of 
them and preserved his temper admirably; but the 
member, whom he set aright, seemed to have lost all 
patience." 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 103 

"May 28. To-day I dined at Mr. Benjamin Con- 
stant's. I do not know when I have been present at an 
assembly of such choice spirits, of men eminent for 
their learning and genius and accustomed to the great 
world during the whole of an active life. On entering 
I found Mons. Benj. Constant and General la Fayette. 
To the latter I was immediately presented. The hero 
took me by the hand, which he warmly pressed, and 
began talking in the most friendly manner, as if to be 
an American were to him a sufficient recommendation. 
He is a tall and very stately man, with an open amiable 
countenance — breathing good will and philanthropy. 
Next entered Mr. Alex, de Humboldt, and presently two 
men, not particularly celebrated, from the department 
which Mr. Constant represents. A general conversa- 
tion on political subjects ensued. The more I see of 
Mr. de Humboldt, the more I admire him; he does 
understand the art of talking to perfection. He is at 
home on every subject that is started; I have heard him 
talk on philological subjects and what to others seemed 
dry and uninteresting, when treated of by him became 
pleasant as well as instructive. In politics he is de- 
cidedly liberal, and can manage a political discussion 
even with the great masters of political wisdom. He 
talks to the ladies with as much ease as if he had passed 
years in frequenting saloons and drawing-rooms, instead 
of climbing Chimborazo and exploring Mexico; he 
talks with grace of the news of the day, tells a story 
charmingly, and relates a current tale of intrigue with 
unrivalled gaiety and spirit. Last of all the celebrated 
Dr. Gall, the Craniologist came in; and we adjourned 



104 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

to the dining-room. The conversation continued to 
treat of pohtics; the general history of the changes in 
the chamber and the causes of the Hberal party effecting 
so httle were discussed. A good deal of warmth was 
used, for the sitting in the house to-day had been un- 
usually stormy. Presently General Sebastiani entered, 
and the conversation became more interesting and 
warm. Mr. Constant explained the downfall of 
Decazes: after the unlucky death of the Duke of Berry, 
Decazes offered to throw himself into the arms of the 
Ultras. They however rejected him with disdain. He 
attempted then to win the liheraux, but they said, you 
have no principles; we'll have nothing to do with you. 
Three things ruin the Cote gauche: the metaphysical 
principles, the dinners in the country, and the want of 
union. The other day as they were about gaining a 
question Lefitte took twenty off with him to dinner 
at his country house, and so the point was lost. The 
greatest freedom in conversation prevails. No man 
feels bound either to conceal or soften his opinion. 
General Sebastiani combatted Mr. Constant with 
warmth; and each one was ready to explain and main- 
tain his own views with warmth. Dr. Gall spoke but 
little, seemed to care little about politics. His physiog-. 
nomy is very striking and original; it expressed great 
sagacity. Thedinner was remarkably nice; everything 
was served up genteelly but without display. We sat 
in a small snug room at a convenient round table; so 
that the whole party was brought close together. And 
at that little table how many men, who hold a conspicu- 
ous place in the political and literary world! Benjamin 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 105 

Constant — General Sebastiani — Dr. Gall, Alexander 
von Humboldt! I never was at so pleasant a dinner 
party. And then that hero, whose fame we cherish in 
America so fondly. General la Fayette, the purest of 
politicians, for neither ambition, nor prospects of glory, 
nor wealth, nor rank, nor persecution has been able to 
make him swerve in the least from his principles. It 
was nearly nine before we rose from table; at that time 
other persons came in, to pass the evening at Mad. 
Constant's; this being the evening, on which company 
is received at her home. IMr. Constant is a tall and very 
stout man; with finely broad shoulders, and a manly 
frame. His language is excellent; he always expresses 
himself forcibly and elegantly. He is clear and practi- 
cal in his views. Of all the members I have heard in the 
house, he seems to me the most eloquent, and in conver- 
sation he has a perfect command over his language, 
himself, and the ideas, which he is desirous of develop- 
ing. May the cause of liberty prosper in his hands!" 

^^ May 30. General la Fayette had encouraged me 
to come to see him. I went to his house today, and was 
shown into his parlour. Four engravings hang on its 
walls. The Rights of man and of the citizen, as de- 
creed by the 'Assemblee Constituante,' and accepted 
by King Louis XVI, surrounded by appropriate devices 
are hung on one side of the door. A similar copy of 
the constitution of the United States is on the other 
side; at the top of it is the likeness of Washington. The 
third Engraving is that of the French frigate, which 
when beaten by the English chose rather to go down, 



106 GEORGE BANCROFT [I813-I822 

than surrender; the moment chosen is that, when the 
French are about to be swallowed up by the waves, and 
in the enthusiasm of liberty exclaim, vive la liberie, vive 
la Republique. The last Engraving is one taken from 
the statue lately made of Washington by Canova. This 
hangs in the most conspicuous part of the room, and 
attracts the eye at once on entering. These are worthy 
ornaments for the chamber of a distinguished partisan 
of liberty. It has seldom had in Europe so pure and 
upright a champion as General la Fayette." 

"June 20. This morning at 11 o'clock Mr. Washing- 
ton Irving called on me, and proposed an excursion to- 
gether to Mr. Gallatin's^ at Verrieres. For the sake of 
his company I was glad to go. We walked to the barrier 
of the city, where there are always small carriages in 
waiting ready to go to any village for which they can get 
a freight. These vehicles are called . . . cuckoos. 
. . . They are convenient enough, clean and airy, 
calculated to carry from six to eight persons. One poor 
horse is doomed to draw the whole. Still that poor one 
must run rapidly; and as the road is good you get on 
very rapidly. Into one of these noble carriages we 
ascended, and for fifteen sous were transported in not 
much more than an hour about 7 miles. The highway 
to Orleans was the road we took as far as Bernis. Here 
we got out, and determined to walk the rest. Thus far 
the country passed through, had been richly cultivated 
and arrayed in the fairest robes of successful agriculture; 
but still it was France for all that. Here we turned 

' Albert Gallatin, then United States Minister to France. 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 107 

aside from the main road, and walked through more 
delicious scenery. Hills, woods, parks, country seats, 
villages, frequent spires of country churches, fields 
waving with the tall corn, just beginning to lose its 
greenness, fruit orchards, meadows where the grass 
had just been cut and hay was then making, all these 
and the beauties attendant on such scenery delighted 
us, as we went on. The birds were singing merrily along 
the road, and the peasants working cheerfully in the 
fields. All the while Mr. Irving delighted and instructed 
by his rich and varied conversation. He gave me such 
advice, as his own experience well enabled him to do, 
and never did I listen to counsels with more satisfaction. 
He is in every respect a most pure and amiable man. 

"At my time of life he tells me, I ought to lay aside 
all cares, and only be bent on laying a stock of knowl- 
edge for future application. If I have not pecuniary 
resources enough to get at what I could wish for, as 
calculated to be useful to my mind, I must still not give 
up the pursuit. Still follow it; scramble to it; get at 
it as you can; but be sure to get at it. If you need 
books, buy them; if you are in want of instruction in 
any thing take it. The time will soon come, when it 
will be too late for all these things. 

"Before entering Mr. Gallatin's we looked out a nice 
grass plot; and there throwing ourselves at length along 
the green shade, I was reminded of all the carelessness 
and innocent delights of my boyhood. 

"We found Mr. Gallatin at home and at leisure, glad 
to see us, and willing to amuse us. The ladies had gone 
to Paris; but were to return to dinner. Baron de 



108 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1S22 

Stael, son of the Mad. de Stael, was with Mr. Gallatin 
as we entered. He is a plain man, but apparently a 
very amiable one. We were soon left by him; and then 
some conversation ensued. After this Mr. Gallatin 
took us through his garden, and up the hill, which rises 
behind his house, and from which we had a most de- 
lightful view of the whole adjacent country. Two rows 
of hills run North and South at some distance from each 
other. Between them flows a little brook, scarcely large 
enough to be found, gently winding thro' the wide 
valley, which it fertilizes. Mr. Gallatin was full of 
playfulness and gaiety. At dinner Mrs. and Miss 
Gallatin, young Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Sheldon the 
secretary of the legation were added to our number. 
The dinner was excellent ; a family never need wish for a 
better. To various dishes of great delicacy the best 
fruits of the season from their own garden were added. 
Conversation too was gay and continued. The German 
sceptics in criticism were laughed at; those men, who 
deal in quotations by the hundreds and stud their pages 
with long lists of cited authors in the margin, were par- 
ticularly the subject of a great deal of pleasantry. 
Pere Harduin^ so famous for his doubts was cited as a 
counterpart to those, who have of late den\,ed the exist- 
ence of Homer. And the little book, whose author is 
unknown, 'Compere Matthieu' was mentioned as ridi- 
culing such wild schemes in a masterly way. We left 
Mr. Gallatin's at seven in the evening. On returning 
we took a different way through the fields; and had a 

' Probably Jean Hardouin, numismatist, classical and theo- 
logical scholar, 1G4G-1729. 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 109 

delightful walk as the sun was going down in a cloudless 
sky, the cool air of evening heightening the delights of 
exercise. Just as the shades of night were drawing near, 
we met with a cuckoo, and getting in were soon rolled 
over the paved highway to the vast metropolis of France. 
Passing over the beautiful Pont des Arts and crossing 
the court of the Louvre, I parted from Mr. Irving in the 
beautiful street Rivoli, and returned to my own room 
from one of the pleasantest excursions I have ever 
made." 

"July 4. This great national festival did not pass 
unnoticed by the Americans, staying at Paris. It was 
celebrated by a dinner, at which General la Fayette 
was present. Toasts were drunk, and volunteers given. 
I gave ' The land of Minerva. The birth-place of arts, 
philosophy and freedom; civilising her conquerors in 
her decline, regenerating Europe in her fall; may her 
sons rebuild in her climes the home of liberty.' The 
contest of the Greeks at present is too interesting a 
subject to be talked of lightly, or to be regarded as a 
commonplace war of ambition or interest. It is a 
nation rising against tyranny and vindicating the rights 
of man. Since the days of the American war for inde- 
pendence, there has been no scene of exertion so pure 
and so glorious as this." 

"July 5. Last evening I returned from the dinner 
at a late hour with Mr. Washington Irving. It was a 
fine evening; we walked a long time by the side of the 
Garden of Tuilleries. He was eloquent in speaking of 



no GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

the advantages, prospects and duties of our Country. 
Mr, Irving is the most amiable and excellent man, in so 
far as I may judge, whom I have met with in Europe. 
I can almost say, that I never go away from him, 
without finding my better principles and feelings 
warmed, strengthened and purified by his eloquent 
conversation." 

Both the diary and letters of this time betray loneli- 
ness and disappointment at receiving so few letters from 
America. The diary preserves even some disconsolate 
verses, "The Pilgrim's Complaint." One of the letters, 
of broader biographical interest, must be given: 

To Andrews Norton. 

"Paris, Julij 18, 1821. 

"I received some days since a few lines from you. 
They were full of kindness, as your letters always have 
been. It had been so long too, that I had been left 
without letters from home, that my emotions on re- 
ceiving them were unusually deep. Some weeks before 
leaving Gottingen I received a letter from you; from 
the date of that letter more than a year had passed; and 
within that time I heard from you but once. Of this 
time I have passed months without any information of 
any kind from home: there were some other circum- 
stances which contributed to render my situation un- 
pleasant; so that for some time I have written no letters, 
excepting such as duty required. 'Tis but within a few 
months, that I have learnt 'the necessity of self-reliance.' 
Though I have been a thousand leagues from America, 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 111 

I have not entirely lived in Europe. I was glad to learn, 
to observe, to compare; to admire, to be amused; but 
the better part of me was on the other side of the At- 
lantic. I had accustomed myself to depend on my 
friends there for counsel much more than you can easily 
believe. I used to read their letters carefully; and 
though alas! I have never been favoured with advice, 
with direct and explicit advice, I have uniformly de- 
duced from the general tenour of their letters, what they 
wish me to become, and what they desire me to avoid. 
If the rhetorician bids you ask, how the great models of 
style would have expressed, what you are expressing; 
how much surer a guide it is in moral action, to con- 
sider which of your friends thinks most severely of 
virtue, and what he would judge of the course, ex- 
pedient to be followed. The rule of the rhetorician 
may deceive, may be too difficult, impracticable; but 
the second never can be wrong or uncertain. . . . 

"You are right to warn me against the vice of 
Europe. Yet as far as I have been in the world, I find 
one place nearly as bad as another. I mean by that; 
there are everywhere the means of indulgence offered 
to the dissolute. The number of the dissolute is of 
course unequal. But after all, is Amsterdam worse 
than Hamburgh, or is Paris worse than Amsterdam? 
And can Naples exceed Paris ? He that will be vicious 
can be so in any part of Europe. Weimar is the only 
place I know of, worthy of commemoration for its staid 
morality. Yet the temptations, that a young man falls 
in with, are not so great as supposed — unless he be 
destitute of feeling. Then he may find attractions in 



112 GEORGE BANCROFT [I813-I822 

every species of disgusting riot. But he, who has a 
heart and enthusiasm will, amid a general depravity of 
manners, seek out and admire the few grand models of 
uncorrupted virtue. These become the more effective 
in awaking honourable ambition, by the very contrast, in 
which they stand with the vulgarity and meanness of the 
common herd. Who, to excuse debauchery, ever has 
quoted the thousand corrupt senators of Rome? Yet 
the one untarnished Cato has been the bright point, 
to which the eyes of the young have been turned for 
many a century. 

"Sometimes when weeks or months have passed, and 
no line from home has come to gladden me, I look 
within myself and live within myself. I would rest on 
the bosom of nature : I would go out among her beauties 
and commune with our general mother. I would give 
free course to imagination, create for myself a world of 
my own; I would strive to draw my principles and my 
happiness from myself, and build up my Paradise in 
my own soul. And so it must be. For our faith and 
our virtue we must not depend on any external impulse, 
but draw it from a source, which is always ours. Nothing 
must be too high or too pure for our thoughts and our 
wishes. We must neither care for good report nor ill 
report, nor for profit nor for loss, nor for utility nor for 
suffering. Strange, that a Christian moralist should in 
his theory of morals stand so far beneath Plato and 
Socrates; strange that a sound philosopher should call 
utility the basis of morals! Prometheus, exulting in the 
virtue, for which an unjust power was inflicting on him 
the torments of hell, might have taught the Christian 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 113 

a sublime lesson. The precept, Be perfect as God is 
ferjcct, contains in itself the very essence of morals and 
religion, and are the sublimest words ever pronounced 
on earth. Such are the principles, to which I have been 
led; and now for the first time I feel myself independent. 
And were I again to be left as I probably shall be for 
months without messages from home, I could still give 
way with cheerfulness to 

'The wand'ring thought and high design, 
The fairy dreams, to virtue dear,' 

and when I think of the many charges made me to 
beware of the voluptuous air of the South, I remember 
the fountain of Arethuse, which, though the whole 
sea of Sicily was bitter, passed through it all without 
losing its sweetness. And when I give way to fancy, and 
dream of futurity and form desires and wishes, I find 
all my hopes of enjoyment on earth are connected with 
the hope of literary activity and domestic quiet. There 
are three things I covet much; yea four that I vehe- 
mently long for. Virtue, a life of study, and cheerful- 
ness. If to these be added the calm and pure delights 
of friendship, what more do I need to be perfectly 
happy? Now that you are married, you will say 
perhaps — a wife — I am too young to think about 
that — therefore stop at friendship. Are not my wishes 
moderate? Do not laugh at me for my vast views. 
To be virtuous, and studious, and cheerful and be- 
loved! to what man's lot did these four things ever 
fall? . . . 

"I have just received from a friend a letter, an- 



114 GEORGE BANCROFT [I813-IS22 

noiincing your marriage and the tour you have been 
making to the lakes. You are happy now, are you not ? 
— perfectly happy, or who may ever hope to be? Yet 
do not forget me. Think sometimes kindly of me, and 
sometimes speak of me to Mrs. Norton. Pray tell her, 
tljere is a little fellow in Europe, whom when a boy, 
you thought worthy of your regard, and who, now that 
his boyish years are ending, is hoping as a man to become 
worthy of your friendship. He may return so changed 
by years, that he will be as it were a stranger in his own 
country. But then add that as Americans are famous 
for their hospitality, you mean to give him a warm 
welcome, and make him love home more than ever. 
Say what you will, write to me as often as you will or 
can; but do not forget nor cease to regard with friendly 
feelings your most true and affectionate friend 

"George Bancroft." 

Between August 3d and 2Sth Bancroft paid a visit to 
London to meet his friend Samuel A. Eliot, father of the 
present head of Harvard University. Of the steamboat 
crossing from Calais to Dover the diary says: "A 
light breeze was blowing from England, while borne on 
by the power of steam we kept a steady and regular 
course against the winds and the tides." For seeing the 
best of London Bancroft evidently had no such oppor- 
tunities as those which opened so many doors to him in 
Berlin and Paris. At Westminster Abbey workmen 
were "still busy in removing the stages erected for the 
coronation [of George IVj, and all application for ad- 
mission was in vain." Westminster Hall he found 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 115 

"still fitted out with all the crimson and gold of the 
coronation festivities." There were fogs, and alto- 
gether one is not surprised to find either the entry 
(August 13th) "London is no place to live in," or the 
later declaration (August 28th), "I was glad to be in 
France again." Yet there are two brief entries in the 
diary at London, and a letter, dealing to be sure more 
with Paris than with the English capital, which, for 
their substance, claim a place here. 

"London, August 8, 1821. 
"Dr. Caldwell, Professor at the University of Ken- 
tucky took me last evening to spend a few hours 
in the company of some young friends of his, — 
the daughters of Dr. Bollman. Their Father has 
been deservedly admired for the integrity he dis- 
played in the attempt to rescue General la Fayette 
from his prison at Olmiitz. An interesting volume of 
travels in the United States by an English lady has just 
been published, in which the merit of that action has 
been almost exclusively attributed to Col. Huger. 
This is unjust; it was Dr. Bollman, who plan'd the 
undertaking, and looking for an assistant in it, could 
find no one but an American worthy of implicit confi- 
dence. That this is the true account I gather from a 
narrative of the event by Dr. Bollman himself. 

"August 12. At the Unitarian chapel in Essex 
Street I heard Mr. Belsham, the great apostle of Unita- 
rianism in England. He is a corpulent heavy man, dull 
and monotonous in the delivery of his sermon. If the 



116 GEORGE BANCROFT [1S13-1822 

good cause had not more eloquent defenders in America 
it would make but litde progress. Mr. Belsham in his 
discourse entered into all the depths and obscurities of 
metaphysics, discussing the relation of the 'mind or 
percipient principle' to matter, and the possibility or 
probability of the soul's being material. I was disap- 
pointed in him. Good Christianity is better than bad 
metaphysics." 

To President Kirkland. 

"London, August 17, 1821. 
"I am now in England for a few days contrary to my 
own intentions I might almost say; and certainly to the 
well considered plan I had framed for passing the 
month of August in Switzerland. But as a three days' 
journey could give me the comfort of seeing a friend, a 
sight which I have so long been deprived of, I could not 
resist Eliot's request to cross the channel, seconded as it 
was by my own wishes. Travelling is not the pleasant- 
est thing in the world; and it is necessary frequently to 
recruit strength and spirits by leaning for support on the 
bosom of an old acquaintance. It is now some weeks 
since I received the few lines, with which you favoured 
me last spring. Your letter was accompanied by one 
from my Father and another from Mr. Norton. They 
served to throw light on each other, and it certainly was 
not without high emotions, that I found your favour and 
that of Mr. N. hardly less expressive of kind feelings 
and good will than that of my own Parent. These new 
instances of benevolence have led me to reflect on the 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 117 

singular vicissitudes of my past years, few as they have 
been. They have excited not merely a warm sensation 
of gratitude, but others of a mingled nature, some of 
them painful, others most encouraging. I will not at- 
tempt to describe my feelings, because I know I could 
not do so justly; and silence on my part will not I am 
sure be thought to indicate a deficience of proper 
emotion. 

"It was three months, that I passed in the French 
metropolis. This residence, though all too short, served 
to cure me of many ungrounded prejudices and false 
views of French character, which I had brought with 
me from America. How easy it is to call a nation 
fickle or corrupt: of fierce, determined vice England 
will show a stranger more in a night than France in a 
month, and as for their reputed love of change the 
ultras are as stubborn and unbending in their attach- 
ment to royal prerogatives and rights as the body of the 
nation is firm and constant in its love of liberty. And 
never do I expect to see a people so courteous and oblig- 
ing as the French. Their pictures, their statues, their 
libraries and cabinets are open to every stranger, who 
presents himself for admittance. In London there is 
nothing of this, and except the Docks and the Exchange 
I know no public place that may be entered without 
solicitation. At Paris I had the good fortune to be 
particularly recommended to the illustrious Prussian 
traveller A. von Humboldt. He treated me with the 
utmost kindness and to him I am indebted for several 
most valuable acquaintances. Yet at present there are 
in France no leading minds on the stage to guide public 



118 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

opinion and give a character to literary society. Among 
the pubHshers there never was a greater degree of 
activity than at the present moment; but they are em- 
ployed rather in multiplying the editions of their de- 
parted classics than in bringing forward original works. 
The publishers are divided into two political parties: 
according as they are supported by the patronage of the 
liberals or the royalists. And this guides them in the 
choice of works to be reprinted. But the latter cannot 
print Bossuet as fast as the former can Rousseau; and 
the public seems to grow tired of learning history from 
Rollin and Millot. Still the royalists adhere to them 
and think it quite revolutionary to learn it of more 
recent historians. 

"In polite literature nothing new of great value is 
produced, but the readers of poetry cannot do without 
their novelties, and now for them translations are 
making of Shakespeare, Schiller and Byron. These 
are the popular works of the day advertised at every 
corner of Paris, and found on every bookseller's counter. 
They are translated not into verse: that had been too 
difficult or impossible, but into a sort of stilted prose, 
which is quite of a sounding and astonishing nature. I 
read a little of the French Byron, but was frightened at 
the first onset, and almost vow'd never to read him 
again but in the original. Yet he is read with great 
avidity throughout the gay city, and the French version 
of Lord Byron's new performances are to be had almost 
as soon at the Palais Royal as at the original publisher's 
in London. . . , 

"Apart from the general affability of the Pa- 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 119 

risians there was another thing, which particularly 
delighted me. I heard men, as distinguished for their 
knowledge of the world as for their genius or erudition, 
continually bestow the highest and most judicious 
praises on those of our countrymen, who during their 
travels in Europe have everywhere done so much to 
conciliate for us the favour and good wishes of Euro- 
peans. I had heard them extolled by the German 
scholars; but that I did not much mind, because they 
have seldom the faculty of discriminating character and 
are wholly without knowledge of man. Not so they, 
who live at Paris : and when I have heard Mr. de Hum- 
boldt or the Duke de Broglie speak of Mr. Everett and 
Mr. Ticknor, I have felt more proud than ever of my 
New England home. Mr. Cogswell was particularly 
well received by Cuvier: and (little as the character of 
Cuvier as a man is to be respected) where he praises, his 
praise may be regarded as sincere. That elegant ob- 
server of nature is haughty and disdains ordinarily to 
converse on subjects of science even with the learned. 
The sole exception, which I have heard of his making, 
was in favour of Mr. Cogswell. I have heard too the 
judgment, that Cuvier is understood to have passed on 
his genius and acquirements. In my youthful extrava- 
gance I should hardly have ventured to have said more 
of any man. If then Cogswell were to die without leav- 
ing behind him laurels of unfading greenness, what may 
the rest of us young men hope for? 

"Cuvier, growing tired of his scientific glory, has set 
up for a gentleman and a statesman. He is foolish 
enough to pretend to disregard his labours as an ob- 



120 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1S22 

server of nature, saying, they have been only his amuse- 
ments. He had all along felt himself designed for a 
statesman. Now what can be more weak and childish 
than that? He has not one quality requisite in a 
minister excepting that of speaking gracefully and 
fluently. He is very insignificant as a politician; and 
yet for a few petty distinctions at court and in high life 
he is ready to disregard the glory of standing at the 
head of one of the noblest sciences. And after all what 
is even a successful statesman in Europe ? A mere 
king-serving, time-serving courtier; a thing without 
enthusiasm and without philanthropy. Their glory is 
as fleeting and as empty as the light cloud that is driven 
about by the winds as they are by contending interests, 
and which passes, as they pass, to make way for another 
as light. Cuvier the anatomist is a man, before whom 
I could have trembled with admiration; but Cuvier the 
politician encourages me again. And La Place too, 
why I was told at Cambridge by my highly honoured 
instructor, that La Place was the rival of Newton. Li 
Paris his picture is to be seen and there you see not the 
likeness of him whose genius grasped the fabric of the 
universe, but that of a French Peer. A peer of France 
the rival of Newton! Were he a plain private man I 
would look on him with the same reverence with which 
I look back on the memory of Archimedes; and regard 
him as even greater than the ancient. But now I know 
that the ancient had a noble and sublime soul; and I 
know as well that La Place has a weak one; for he 
prides himself on a foolish distinction, which ought 
never to have been his. I cease to venerate the author 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 121 

of the Mecanique Celeste, when I see him give over his 
subhme wanderings through the infinity of the universe, 
worthy of an angel or a disembodied spirit, to play an 
insignificant part in the childishness of political squab- 
pies. . . ." 

The "instances of benevolence" mentioned in the 
letter just quoted must have had some practical bearing 
upon the continuance of Bancroft's stay in Europe; for 
he was soon devoting a few days in Paris to preparations 
for a solitary walking trip through the Alps, on his way 
to Italy for the winter of 1821-1822. It is no wonder 
that he thought it worth while to copy in his journal the 
note from Alexander von Humboldt which he bore with 
him from Paris :^ 

" Je prends la liberte, mon respectable ami et confrere 
de vous recommander un jeune Americain qui a fait 
d'excellentes etudes de philologie et d'histoire philoso- 
phique en Allemagne. M. Bancroft est bien digne de 
vous voir de pres; il est I'ami de mon frere, et il apartient 
a cette noble race de jeunes Americains, qui trouvent 
que le vrai bonheur de I'homme consiste dans la culture 
de I'intelligence. 

" (Signed) Humboldt. 

"Paris, le 7 Septre, 1821." 

For six weeks he had but slight use for letters of intro- 
duction. Most of this time was spent in solitude. The 

* It appears from Prof. W. M. Sloane's article in the Century 
Magazine, January, 1SS7, that this note was addressed to Pictet, 
of Geneva, whom Bancroft met there in October. 



122 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

diary contains a full record of his walks from place to 
place in the Alps, of the beauties of nature which filled 
him with delight, of his frequent thoughts for the future, 
in which the prospect of entering the Christian ministry 
engaged his serious attention. It was a period of deeper 
heart-searching than Bancroft seems to have known 
before. When the weeks of solitude began, he had just 
been driven to accept as a fact the loss of his brother 
John at sea. The problems of his own future stared 
him in the face, and he showed no disposition to shirk 
them. A passage from the diary under the heading, 
"October 7, 1821. Egerkingen to Fraubrunnen, 8 
leagues," is typical: 

"... It seemed to me this morning that my disposi- 
tion fits me for a clergyman; and that I never should be 
happy, as if God would one day teach me to pray 
earnestly and preach eloquently. To me it seems more 
important to enforce general purity of mind and high 
and generous feelings, than to distract attention by the 
eulogy of individual virtue or declamations against 
heinous crimes and vices of which mayhap not one of the 
hearers ever would be guilty. I would like to preach 
not to the old; they can hardly be changed; but to the 
young and the innocent; and how happy should I 
be in intimate and pure communion with unspotted 
minds. 

"Several peasants joined me today, and a poor beg- 
garly fellow who was wandering on foot like myself, 
seemed to think me a very "proper companion, and after 
much questioning in his horrible low German dialect, 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 123 

seemed to think it strange that I would not stop and 
drink a measure of wine with him. 

"One person who went with me a few steps, wished 
to know if I was of the cloth, ein geistlicher. I must 
have something of the kind written in my face, since 'tis 
not the first time I have been reckoned a clergyman 
by men, who had never before set eyes on me. 

" For a long time I have not looked in a mirror, and as 
I glanced my eye at one this morning I was frightened at 
my own long black beard. I wonder I have not been 
taken for a madman. My socks are all worn out, my 
trowsers are going, my shoes are good for nothing, my 
coat is decaying, my money is nearly spent; in truth I 
shall be glad when I see Geneva again. ..." 

There are other passages revealing the highest exalta- 
tion of spirits. At one point, he writes, "I was seized 
with delight, tho' warm with a long walk, could not but 
caper and sing or at least cry out a chorus of a rude song, 
as I passed amidst such beautiful scenes. I danced and 
sported and sprang about and might well have been 
taken for a madman." Elsewhere he describes himself 
as" making verses at a great rate." The following portion 
of a letter — from which an equal portion including two 
poetical outbursts is omitted — reflects something of the 
rhapsodic mood which coloured all the Swiss experiences : 

To Andrews Norton. 

"Geneva, October 13, 1821. 

"My kindest and most respected friend, before 
crossing the Alps, which I hope to do ere the full moon 



124 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

loses aught of her brightness, I wish once more to recall 
myself to your affection. When in Italy there will 
be so much for me to do, and so few opportunities of 
writing, that I shall hardly be able to send regular ac- 
counts of myself: which will be the less necessary, as I 
hope soon to be bodily among you. I reached Geneva 
about four weeks ago : the month of October promised 
to be pleasant: and I hastened to enter among those 
valleys, which I have so long wished to see. Leaving 
Geneva on the Southern side, I passed through all 
Savoy, the delicious valley of Chamouny, saw the 
Glaciers and icy oceans of Mount Blanc, ascended the 
Rhone, crossed the Alps to the sweet Lakes of Thun and 
Brientz, have been near the Jungfrau's untrodden 
snows, and seen the avalanche tumbling from her peaks, 
crossed the high Grimsel, beheld where the Rhone 
gushes from its glacier, and then passed through all that 
country, of which I had so often dreamed in childhood, 
where the deeds of Tell and the well fought battles of 
liberty have lent an omnipotent charm to every valley 
you gaze on. Earth has not scenes like these, where for 
many a league you walk through narrow valleys hardly 
a mile wide, and see rising on each side of you the lofty 
walls of the Alps with their snow tops, that the sun has 
no power on. When I entered Switzerland I came with 
a heavy and desponding heart. One event after another 
had happened to crush everything like cheerfulness in 
my bosom, and though I had not yet gained my one and 
twentieth year, my mind seemed to be sear, and I al- 
most thought I had the heart of an old man. But I 
have reposed on the bosom of nature, and have there 



1S13-1822] PREPARATION 125 

grown young again: from her breasts gush the streams 
of life, and they who drink of them, regain cheerfuhiess 
and vigour. I travelled alone and like a pilgrim on his 
tour to the promised land. I was on foot. Yet I 
never felt fatigue, and solitude was delightful. I could 
sit undisturbed amid the beauties of nature, and give 
way to the delightful flow of feelings and reflections, 
which came hurrying on me, as I sat on the Alpine 
rocks and gazed on the Alpine solitudes. Never till 
now did I know how beautiful and how kind a mother 
Earth is. . . . 

" As evening came on, I was walking along the banks 
of the lake of Thun. Its banks are perpendicular 
often, always steep excepting to the S. W. and of a 
tremendous height. Here I was unattended but by my 
thoughts, with the water on one side, and the rocks 
clothed in tannen on the other. A heavy rain came 
on : the clayish soil became muddy : and impeded me in 
marching; streams were pouring down the rocks: my 
path did as it were often lay in a torrent: and I had 
already walked nearly thirty miles, and had yet 6 to put 
behind me. Yet I walked patiently, aye calmly and 
cheerfully; I said to the winds, blow on, I care not for 
ye; to the sun, hide thy beams, I carry a sun in my 
bosom: to the rains, beat on; for my thoughts gush 
upon me faster than your drops. Night came on: I 
took many a precipice for the opening into a village; 
many a tall mass of granite for a house; and once I 
exclaimed there is the inn, and there its sign, as I saw 
a steep rock, from whose top there hung down several 
bushes fantastically tangled. But at last I reached 



126 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

Unterseen, slept soundly and sweetly, for I composed 
myself to slumber in hope; and lo! in the morning the 
tops of the Jungfrau were glittering in the sun, and the 
valleys laughed in their green sunshiny loveliness. 
Now were you ever to feel sad ; if, which God avert, 
if you were destined to suffer and to mourn, then look 
for consolation in solitude: go out into the fairest 
scenes of earth, pour out your sorrows upon na- 
ture's bosom: she will fold you in her arms and give 
you vigour and serenity again: but if any of those, 
who are sailing carelessly along in the gilded bark of 
happiness, come to you to offer consolation, do not 
listen to them. Tell them they are fools — tell them 
to go float like the butterflies in the sun and leave 
you to retirement: tell them the mourning heart is 
as one of the vast feathered train of passage, whose 
wing hath been broken by the arrow of the hunter; 
and that 'tis easy for one of his companions to stoop 
for a moment in passing from his proud course, and 
bid the poor wretch that is moaning in tthe bushes to 
have patience. ... 

"But I had better stop: my letter is already too long 
and I had rather you would think me happy, than tell 
you what cause I have to be sorrowful. I shall soon 
be with you: till then preserve for me your good will 
and kind affection: I could wish that on my return 
things would present themselves to my mind in as 
vivid colours, as they have done when in my solitary 
walks. I have reflected on virtue and truth and re- 
ligion, and called up in my memory the bright examples 
of disinterested enthusiasm: I could wish that I could 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 127 

one day write or speak as I have then thought; for then 
I should be eloquent: I could wish that the flow of 
reflection would always be as chaste as it then was; for 
I then should be virtuous: I could meet an angel and 
not blush; and if I could always possess the calm 
serenity of spirit, which I have sometimes felt, when the 
rain has been pelting over me and the torrents streaming 
round my feet, descending night break in wrath her 
vials of bitterness over me, the winds of destruction beat 
on me and the rains of misfortune gather to fall on my 
poor head: and I should still be calm, resigned and 
happy. Farewell I am neither mad, nor extravagant, 
nor dreaming. I am cheerful and rational and serene: 
now that time is precious to me, that moments are to 
be counted I have willingly resolved to spend two days 
here, to write once more to my friends before I enter 
Italy. In 5 or 7 days I may be at Milan. I would 
willingly leave my cares behind me and enter Italy 
with a light heart. Again I say farewell: if happiness 
dwells where it ought to do, is not your house the most 
cheerful on earth ? I hope it is ; and hope in the midst 
of your gladness some thoughts sometimes glance off 
towards me. 

Oh think of me, when coldly blow 

The sullen breezes of November; 
For while o'er mildest climes I go 

Thy love and mildness I'll remember. 

And when the glad new year is come, 
And cheerfully thy hearth is burning; 

Oh! think of him who e'en at Rome 

His thoughts, his heart towards thee is turning. 



128 GEORGE BANCROFT [I813-IS22 

And when the April rains descend, 
And seeds of Hfe in earth ye bury, 

Still bless thy fond, thy wand'ring friend, 
Who's soon to tempt the rough sea's fury. 

• And when in May the budding tree 

In every breast awakes devotion. 

Then in thy prayers remember me, 

For then I'll brave th' unsparing ocean. 

And when the summer sun grows warm, 

And light winds rock the rose that woos 'em 

Then open wide thy friendly arm, 
And clasp me kindly to thy bosom. 

"Ever yours, 

"George Bancroft." 

The "five or seven days" allowed for reaching INIilan 
were extended only to nine. On October 22d we find 
him there. On the 23d and again on the 28th his diary 
contains accounts of dining with Alexander Manzoni 
and his family. Down to the youngest children they 
received the traveller as only a most acceptable guest 
could be received. On the 28th he saw Leonardo da 
Vinci's "Last Supper," and piously exclaimed in his 
diary: "The door cut thro' the legs of the Saviour can- 
not be viewed without horror." There are two entries 
in the journal for the 27th, which in the fight of Ban- 
croft's subsequent experiment in school-teaching and 
of the ripe old age he attained, should be preserved. 

"Milan, October 27, 1821. 
"OF SCHOOLS 
"In reflecting on establishing a school on a large 
foundation, it appears to me that something new might 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 129 

be undertaken with usefulness and advantage. 1. 
Greek should be the first language taught : it would be 
easy to procure or to make the necessary works for 
that. A translation of French's small grammar; and 
of Jacob's Handbook would be sufficient for a com- 
mencement. 2. Natural History should be taught: it 
quickens all the powers, and creates the faculty of accu- 
rate observation. Even in the town schools so much of 
natural history as relates to the plants of husbandry and 
weeds which torment the farmer, ought to be taught 
simply but thoroughly to every boy, and most of all 
to the poorest — whose lot it is to till the earth. 3. 
Emulation must be most carefully avoided, excepting 
the general and mutual desire of excelling in virtue. 
No one ought to be rewarded at the expense of another, 
and even where there is nothing but prizes, they who 
fail of gaining them, may have been impeded by the 
nature of their talents and not by their own want of 
exertion. 4. Corporal punishments must be abolished 
as degrading the individual, who receives them, and as 
encouraging the base passions of fear and deception. 
5. Classes must be formed according to the characters 
and capacities of each individual boy. 6. Country 
schoolmasters might be formed with little expense by 
annexing to the school an institution for orphans, to be 
educated for schoolmasters. Of these the best might 
be chosen for a learned discipline, and be fitted for 
taking care of academies. 7. Eventually a vast print- 
ing establishment might be annexed to the school. 

"For myself at the present moment I would pray to 
be preserved from an early death. I would like to 



130 GEORGE BANCROFT [I813-1822 

console my parents in their afflictions, to cultivate a love 
of virtue, and by being useful to repay the kindness, 
which has ever been shown me by the benevolent and 
high minded. Yet I would not wish to linger out to a 
wretched old age of body and of withered faculties : but 
when the days of active exertion are passed be removed 
to a brighter sphere, where I might serve the Omnipotent 
in exercising his will, or if not chosen for high employ, 
might stand in humility and wait. " 

Of the journey from Milan to Venice one episode 
must be given. Bancroft reached Brescia on the 
afternoon of the 29th, and, having seen the new 
cathedral, climbed a hill which overlooked the city. 
The view filled him with delight. "The sun was just 
setting: half of his red disc was already beneath the 
horizon, and I watched closely the moment, when all 
would vanish. Just as I was giving way to my feelings 
of rapture, two Austrian soldiers presented themselves 
not far from me, one armed with a gun and bayonet, and 
in the grossest and most absolute terms ordered me to 
descend, adding harshness to insolence and threats to 
contumely. I was exasperated at being interrupted in 
my calm admiration of nature, and in that moment my 
dislike of despotisms and military tyranny was stronger 
than ever. But resistance was vain and recrimination 
would have been dangerous. A soldier in Europe is 
licensed to be insolent, and a musket ball never varies 
from its course for an argument's sake. I hastened to 
touch the earth again, and the breath of evening, and 
the still vivid colours of departed day, and the aspect of 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 131 

the new moon were hardly able to tranqiiilise me again. 
I returned to our inn and soon slept soundly undis- 
turbed by bad dreams, and being confident in Providence 
I reposed fearless of 'force of rude and violent men.'" 

In Venice, Florence and the smaller cities through 
which he passed on his way to Rome he saw many 
things with an enthusiasm which tinges the pages of his 
diary with a bright colour. On November 25th he 
arrived in Rome. With its churches, galleries, and 
manifold riches the greater part of his Italian journal is 
concerned. Here it must suffice to reproduce a few of 
the passages recounting the more distinctively personal 
experiences : 

"Rome, November 26, 1821. 

"I rose early, though I had been kept up to a late 
hour by the forms of the ' Doyana ' and the police officers, 
and no sooner was I dressed, than I hastened over the 
bridge of Hadrian to the Church of St. Peter. As I 
came to the bridge I beheld the dome, rising in dignified 
solitude above every thing far and near; and then not 
even the tomb of Hadrian detained me a moment. I 
ran on, till I came to the Place of St. Peter, the sub- 
limest and most impressive, which I have ever beheld. 
I was silent with admiration; my thoughts were sent 
back to my own bosom; and I walked by the Obelisk 
between the fountains and along the majestic Doric 
Colonnades, wrapt in those feelings which I love most of 
all to indulge in. I have heard of the disappointment 
experienced on the first sight of St. Peter's: I thank 
Heaven that I had no emotions but those of wonder and 



132 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

delight, and when 'tis said that the front of the church 
does not seem vast, I think nothing is meant, but that 
it is not monstrously huge. I entered the noblest 
shrine which man has raised of the God of Christians, 
filled with those feelings of devotion and enlargement 
of soul, which such a sight of grandeur may well pro- 
duce. After walking up its grand nave, and around its 
altars, and among its chapels and aisles, which were 
doubly solemn and pleasing for being almost solitary at 
that early hour, I threw myself on my knees before the 
grand altar, and returning thanks to God for guarding 
me amidst all the dangers of travelling, preserving me on 
the high seas and on shore, raising up friends and bene- 
factors for me wherever I have been, and blessing me 
with health and external prosperity in an almost un- 
exampled manner, I besought his Goodness in my 
humble petition to prepare blessings and happiness for 
those generous friends through whose kindness and 
munificence I have seen foreign countries and been able 
to prosecute my journey even to that city which I had 
ever most desired to see. My parents and every mem- 
ber of my family were remembered too in these moments 
of my life, which were too sweet and too solemn to be 
ever forgotten. 

"Leaving St. Peter's I returned to breakfast, and 
then hastening to my banker's I found there two letters, 
one from young Hedge, another from the lady, whom I 
revere admire and love above all women on earth, whom 
I have ever seen. She is to me a bright star, guiding 
me on to virtue and industry: she is a ministering angel, 
pouring comfort into a wounded breast, lending me 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 133 

encouragement and the best of patronage, kindness and 
affectionate advice and making me believe myself 
capable of virtue and honourable deeds, since she thinks 
me worthy of her friendship."* 

"December 17, 1821. . . . Wrote some verses, sug- 
gested by a print I saw of Beauty driving away time. 
This I did only as an exercise; and mean often to make 
verses, though I know they will for the most part be 
poor ones. But I do it only as a useful task, a good 
method of gaining a command of language and learning 
to attend to the nice construction of the lines of our 
harmonious English poets. Perhaps I may one day be 
able to make tolerably good ones." 

'December 21. This evening I was presented to 
the Princess Borghese, sister of Napoleon. On entering 
the rooms, I passed through an elegant suite of apart- 
ments to the one, in which company was assembled. 
Here the maid of honour to the Princess received me and 
conducted me into the private room of the Princess, 
who received me with the utmost kindness. There was 
a grace and an ease in her manners, which were de- 
lightful. Kind but not familiar, attentive but yet 
dignified, she has a more elegant suavity of manners, 
than I remember to have seen in any woman of rank, to 
whom I have been presented. She said civil things of 
America in general, of her prepossessions in their 

' There were letters at about this time from Mrs. Storrow, at 
whose house in Paris Bancroft had first met Washington Irving. 
That the reference above is to her seems a reasonable conjecture. 



134 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

favour, of her gratitude to them for their civility to her 
brother, and asking me how long I was to stay at Rome, 
expressed a wish to see me often. Then leaving me 
she went to the assembly, whom she received and con- 
ducted to the Music room. I was however first shown 
her diamonds and precious stones, a most splendid sight 
and then taken to the room, where the Princess was enter- 
taining her company. I admired the amiable manner, 
in which she paid attention to them all: every lady, 
who entered was welcomed with a kind smile and a kiss. 
To one she gave a rose; she sat down by another; con- 
versed with another, keeping every one amused, and 
putting every one at ease. The furniture of the room 
was splendid. The walls were adorned with portraits 
of the family; the tapestry was very splendid, of damask; 
the chairs rich and elegant; a beautiful harp orna- 
' mented one side of the room, placed near a fine piano. 
During the evening we had some music, one lady playmg 
on the^'piano, and Mad. Dumesnil, the maid of honour 
or rather Dame du Palais accompanying her. The 
music was divine. Of the persons present few were 
English. There was one most exquisitely beautiful 
young Italian woman, reckoned the handsomest in 
Rome, a princess or two, and several others, whose 
names were not told me. Here too I saw Mrs. Patter- 
son, formerly wife of Jerome Bonaparte. She is still 
pretty, though not astonishingly so. The evening 
passed very charmingly. I was highly pleased with the 
gracefulness of the Princess. She spoke to me several 
times during the evening, always very kindly, and 
seemed exceedingly ready to oblige those who wished 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 135 

to see her villa and fine things. The entertainment con- 
sisted of ices, creams, tea and a little cake. The ladies 
were all neatly dressed ; the gentlemen as for the soiree 
of any lady: not in a court dress. The Princess is a 
small woman, elegant, and when young may have been 
beautiful. She is still charming." 

"December 22. ... A proof of the ignorance of the 
Romans has just been given. At one of the better book- 
stores of Rome I was looking at various articles, when 
I was asked of what country I was by an Italian, who 
had entered. As I answered of the United States, 
he rejoined of Philadelphia or Boston? I answered 
Boston. Ah! said the bookseller, I have a large book 
in my shop about Boston; pray, come and look at it. 
I did so and found it to be a history of Hindostan. ' Mi 
son sbagliaio,' cried he,* a little mistake,! took Hindoston 
to be Boston." 

"Rome, January 1, 1822. 

"The new year has opened most beautifully. A 
warm sun, a cloudless sky, a mild and refreshing air 
filled my heart with gladness: a pleasant thing it is to 
the eyes to behold the sun: to me earth seems beautiful. 
I love life: I love the refreshing rays of the sun; I re- 
joice in myrtles and roses ; in the fair face of nature, in 
health and vigorous youth. 

"The first day of a year is a time for serious reflections 
and recollections. I have spent most of this day in 
thinking of my home; of my parents, and all those who 
are connected with me by blood ; of my benefactors; of 
those who honour me with their esteem, and those who 



136 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

make me happy with their friendship. Peace and glad- 
ness to them all ; may their lives pass as free from cares 
and misfortunes as our Roman sky was this evening 
from clouds. May they preserve their affection for 
me against the hour of my return. 

"I cannot but think seriously of the future. This 
year will see me returned to my country, if such be 
God's will, and before its end I may be engaged in the 
duties, which are to last me my whole life. WTio can 
say how great those duties will be? Who can tell, how 
long that life may be spared ? I begin to feel a strong 
desire of engaging in the ministry, of serving at the 
altar of God: I would now willingly rest my hope of 
distinction on the hope of my being eloquent and useful 
in preaching the grand doctrines of Christianity, in 
speaking of God the author of the universe and the 
source of all science, of Christ who has made us ac- 
quainted with his nature, of the nature and possibility 
of virtue, of the duty of becoming like God, of life, 
death and immortality. 

"There are many things in my character yet to be 
changed or improved. I long to become more deeply 
devout: but the full and internal devotion cannot be 
fully gained by a wanderer: at home in retirement there 
will be many an opportunity of becoming well ac- 
quainted with the work of the pious, who have written 
so feelingly on religion. From them I would strive to 
learn the true road to divine truth, and the direct way 
to win hearts. Bonaventura, Thomas a Kempis, St. 
Gregory Nazianzenus and St. Chrysostom are men, 
whose works I must consult. I must learn to govern 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 137 

my thoughts more; to discipHne my mind with severity, 
to restrain a giddy and fruitless enthusiasm, and put in 
its place a more sober and earnest spirit of resolution. 
Then too I must grow manly : for I have gained the age 
of a man, and must remember, that the time, when I 
could indulg . without thinking of active life in a com- 
munion with great minds, who are departed, when I 
could draw knowledge from books without being 
troubled by a weight of labours, and without reflecting 
that the whole end of learning is not the delight it gives 
the mind, is now past and forever. The thought of duty, 
of active labour in life, is ever busy in my mind: the 
cry of public employment rings in my ears; there is no 
room for retiring. And he, who is soon to fill a public 
place of trust and most of all a sacred one, must be 
manly and ingenuous, vigilant over his thoughts and not 
inattentive to appearances. I am soon to go home; 
and may I go, serious and manly, ready for action and 
fit for honourable, dignified and useful exertions." 

"Rome, January 3, 1822. 
"The words of my Father in his letter of Nov. 12, 
1821, I can never forget. . . , Yes, my dear Father, 
if God will preserve my life and lend me strength 
I will strive yet to be a support to your declining 
years and a protector to your children. Of all things 
that I remember with delight, I think most gladly of 
your love. You never chid me unjustly; you never 
taught me any principle of selfishness; you never bade 
me watch carefully the mere interests of this world. 
You gave me nothing but kindness, you taught me noth- 



138 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

ing but virtue. Best of Fathers, may I never forget 
your precepts; may I never be unmindful of your les- 
sons in religion. But most of all may I learn of you 
that fixed and deep faith, which can fasten its eye on 
immortality and clearly discern the scene of eternal 
blessedness. You are my dearest, my kindest, my 
holiest master: and if I do but heed your instructions 
well, it will be more important to me than all the 
sciences of earth, than all the arts and accomplishments 
of life. Oh ! God ; spare me till I gather strength, and 
go hence to be no more, spare me for the embrace of a 
father, the warm love of a mother; and may the hopes, 
which they rest on me, not be vain." 

"January 5, 1822. A rainy day. I remained at 
home till dinner-time. Went then to see Mess. Coolidge 
and Ritchie with whom I dined. We were all to go in 
the evening to the Princess Pauline Borghese's where I 
was to introduce them. We entered the palace just 
before eight: and were very glad to find only the Prin- 
cess' own family collected. She soon made her ap- 
pearance, sweetly dressed, arrayed in Beauty and smiles 
and received us most graciously. We formed a little 
circle round her, and she guided the conversation with a 
most winning sweetness of manner. I had never known 
what she is till now; for now she spoke of herself with 
ease and freedom, mentioned her own misfortunes, her 
predilection for the United States; saying they were the 
only asylum for persons who had suffered as she had. 
She spoke of her health, which is wretched; that she 
has grown wan and thin; (and yet even in her ill health 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 139 

she is beautiful) she can eat nothing, — so weak is her 
stomach; and for the whole day had taken only a little 
bouillion. She sees company; tho' she is fond of 
solitude: for her ill health inclines her to melancholy. 
She said all this with great suavity, made us observe how 
small her waist was, how thin her arms, which used to be 
large and round : showed us her ornaments, new articles 
for her toilette just received from Paris; chatting now 
like a moralist of her misfortunes and now like a woman 
of her beauty and ornaments. Fetes she does not long 
for: for of fetes she has had enough under the em- 
peror: and even then two winters she left Paris to live 
at Nice. 'Malheur a ceux, qui ne trouvent de bonheur 
que dans les fetes,' said she; *as for me I need repose; 
fai besoin de repos, fai besoin d'amities.' And she 
seemed to sum up her wishes in a fine climate, fine 
scenery, and the sea. And all this was said with such 
grace and sweetness, that we could not but feel deeply 
for her. Though a fallen princess she still preserves 
her dignity fully : she is the centre of conversation ; the 
mistress of all present: she bids one to remove the table, 
another to sing, another to dance, and every one loves 
to be first to obey her. Without my requesting it she 
called for her tablets and wrote me a card of entrance 
to the pretty little villa, which she has been building in 
the environs of Rome, and which is reckoned very 
pretty. The Princess receives from Prince Borghese 
$12,000 per year, which is I should think hardly enough 
to support her establishment; for her palace is vast; and 
she is unaccustomed to economy. Her toilette I think 
she said cost her $4,000 per annum. Why, a mere gown 



140 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

costs twenty dollars, observed she; as they entered a 
little into particulars. The Princess seemed to think 
it quite impossible for a lady to dress for only $600 a 
year: a hundred and twenty guineas were nothing for 
a lady's toilette. And so tonight I believe we saw the 
Princess in all forms; in all too she seemed the most 
graceful, elegant and well bred woman that I have ever 
seen. 

" We had some delightful music. ' Nothing but music 
does me good,' and the Princess seemed delighted as 
a most divine air was sung deliciously. We left the 
palace a little after ten; and were quite delighted with 
our evening and most particularly gratified that the 
Princess had received us on an evening, when there was 
no company with her. Her niece, a daughter of Louis, 
was in the room; and her eyes were of a black glossy 
beauty, that might produce an effect on young hearts. 

"I came home and wrote as an exercise the verses,* 
which were hardly worth copying into my journal. 
Went to bed a little after 2 o'clock. " 

A week later the diary contains a sonnet with the 
following comment: "This sonnet is the first, which I 
ever ventured to undertake; and I write it as it were 
extempore merely for the sake of familiarising myself 
with the versification of sonnets. Of the thousands, 
which have been written, how few are really good for 
anything." 

'These verses, "The Complaint of a Princess," were subse- 
quently printed in Bancroft's small volume. Poems (Cambridge, 
1823), to be mentioned in the next chapter. 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 141 

For many Roman experiences which cannot be 
recounted in detail, and for their effect upon Bancroft, 
these portions of a letter to Dr. Kirkland must speak: 

To President Kirkland. 

"Rome, February 10, 1822. 

"Were I to remain in Rome, till I grew tired of the 
place, or till I had seen all its wonders, I believe I never 
should move from it. But since time passes, and Rome 
must be left, I shall wait only a few days, and then 
visiting Naples, hasten to take leave of the Italian 
climate and the delights of the fine arts. I cannot ex- 
press to you, how much happiness I have enjoyed in the 
last four or five months: and now that there are so 
many things, in which I have been particularly blessed, 
I regard myself as most fortunate in having seen Italy. 
When I began ascending the Alps, a most melancholy 
event* in our family had made me very unhappy; the 
winds of the North seemed more piercing than ever; 
the mountains were already covered with snow; and 
with mournful heart and blood thoroughly chilled I 
halted for a half hour on the top of the Simplon. But 
in the afternoon as we rolled down the south side of the 
mountain, I began to feel how reviving a Southern sun 
is; and on gaining the plain and finding the trees still 
verdant, the air mild as in spring, and the fields still 
covered with flowers, I grew glad in spite of myself: a 
generous warmth diffused itself through the system, and 
the mind grew warm too: and ever since then, from 

' The death of his brother John. See pp. 65, 122. 



142 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

the Borromean isles to St. Peter's, from Venice to the 
hills of Tusculum and Alba, one emotion of admiration 
and rapture has succeeded to another, as if curiosity 
could never be fatigued, nor the means of gratifying it 
exhausted. Everything conspires to make a journey in 
Italy the most interesting in the world : the climate, the 
sky, the scenery, the cities and the country, classical 
recollections, the galleries gathered from the relics of 
antiquity, the elegant language, its enchanting literature, 
the productions of modern art keep the eyes and the 
mind constantly and deliciously employed. Were there 
nothing here but the fresco paintings of Raphael, I 
would go round the world thrice to see them. And here 
a short walk brings me to them; and a few minutes more 
to the Apollo, to Laocoon, and the whole gallery of 
marble divinities and heroes. . . . 

"When I think of the time, when I ran about Wor- 
cester as a boy, that knew nothing of Europe but what 
little may be learned from books, and knew but as much 
Latin and Greek as a common schoolboy in America, 
and reflect on what I may since have enjoyed or learned, 
I cannot but wonder at my own happy destiny.. Have I 
indeed learned to feel that Homer and Sophocles are 
divine? Has yEschylus, has Dante a voice intelligible 
to me ? Can I love Virgil and Tasso ? Can I admire 
Michel Angelo as I would Pindar? Raphael as I do 
Virgil? Can I be admitted to the school of Plato? 
Have I walked in the temples and halls of Agrippa and 
Augustus? Has life a charm for me above the enjoy- 
ments of senses? And do I live in health, and feel 
the influence of a delightful climate, and owe all this 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 143 

to [illegible]. I remember always and well, that I 
do owe all the delights of life, which I most value, 
to your disinterested regard, which deemed me not 
unworthy of encouragement and not incapable of im- 
provement. ..." 

On February 15th Bancroft set out for Naples. The 
journey thither and the sights and suggestions of Naples 
itself are graphically recorded in the diary. A letter of 
special personal interest was written at the same time : 

To Andrews Norton. 

"Naples, Tuesday, March 5, 1822. 

"My very dear Sir. — When a man has a longing, 
thought I as I left the mole this afternoon, what must 
he do ? I remembered in answer the story of the little 
girl, who asked herself the same question, and replied. 
Do! my duty! You told me the tale as a child's story: 
it would be well for many a man to think of its moral. 
My longing was an honest one; I desired to write to 
you how delighted I have been with Rome; how 
charmed I am with Naples. A vessel is on the point 
of embarking for Boston : I cannot let it depart without 
some testimony of my remembering you constantly. I 
was actually hastening home to write to you, when ac- 
cident brought me your most affectionate, most welcome 
letter of the 29 December, The negligence of the 
Neapolitan Postmaster had nearly deprived me of it. 
Your counsels and reflections incline me rather to 
thought than to writing: but tomorrow I am going to 



144 GEORGE BANCROFT [I813-I822 

Pestum, and only tonight remains for reminding you 
of me. . . . 

"The poet, who has written the message sent by the 
soul of Cornelia to her husband Paulus ('tis Propertius 
in the last elegy, I believe, of his last book) makes her 
say, ' I have lived without a blemish from the marriage 
to the funeral torches.' It has long been my wish to be 
able to say, when I see the Boston lighthouse, from 
which I took my departure 3| years ago, — viximus 
insignes inter utramque facem. 

"I came abroad so young and have been abroad so 
long, that I return as it were a stranger to my own 
country. There are hardly four or five houses in which 
I feel sure of finding myself remembered. You will 
remember me, and though my face may be changed you 
will find my heart unaltered. If when I come peeping 
my head into your parlour door, you smile and look 
glad to see me near you again, I shall rather look at 
your face than at the finest picture of Raphael's. . . . 

"As for my handwriting I will try to improve. I 
hope this letter will look a little neater than my last, 
though lines [letter torn] and even letters are crooked. 
But you know I write in haste: my next must be done 
better. You speak of fame : the fame I wish for is the 
praise of the virtuous and intelligent. I had rather be 
honourable and virtuous than be esteemed so. But I 
remember what Glaucus's papa told him. As to man- 
ners I may come home awkward: I may return with 
outlandish habits. Now you give me advice: I will 
make a request. I ask for your friendship, if you 
find me worthy of it: but you are not to decide in ten 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 145 

minutes : if I have odd or improper ways tell me of them 
honestly and plainly. Then if I do not reform, send 
me to solitude and friendlessness. I hope to improve 
more in the first twelve months at home, than I have 
ever done in a year in Europe. 

"Commend me to Mrs. Norton as an old friend of 
yours or if you will as a new one you are going to 
make: or as a stranger, who is coming to Cambridge 
and to whom you have some thoughts of being civil. 
Time flies. Good night, good night. The midnight 
stars have long since passed the zenith, and before 
morning breaks I must write two more letters. They 
will be short, I assure you. Commend me to Mr. 
Frisbie. I am heartily glad, that he still thinks of me, 
and hope soon to be inaugurated as his reader again. 
I have read no English books these 3h years. Good 
night. Ever yours. When you pray for absent friends, 
I hope I am included. I shall sail in May if I can. 
The season and the voyage awaken in me too melancholy 
recollections. Valeo. Cura ut valeas. I am glad you 
begin your letter dear George, and am glad you end it 
so. Best of men, Cura ut me ames." 

The excursion to Paestum was duly made and points 
of architectural and archaeological interest were noted 
with care. On March 8th, Bancroft with three com- 
panions set out in a small boat to see the coast of the 
gulf of Salerno. Landing at Amalfi they were asked 
to show their passports, which they could not do. The 
zealous local officials brought them before a justice, 
who in turn sent them on to the Governor of Salerno. 



146 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

It was to him that they owed two nights in a dirty 
prison, "half devoured by evil insects and bugs of 
darkness." Such misfortunes, set down in the diary, 
were relieved by the liberty accorded the prisoners by 
day. Bancroft took advantage of this freedom to see 
and describe the beauties of nature about him. He also 
gave vent to his feelings in verses written by the sea- 
shore, and bearing the title of "The Young Prisoner's 
Lament." The first four of the thirty-two lines are 
typical of all: 

How couldst thou leave thy native land. 

Where waves the flag of Hberty, 
To fall within a tyrant's hand, 

And lose thy birthright — to be free? 

On the third day of this annoying experience, a messen- 
ger brought an order of release from the police at 
Naples, whither Bancroft returned for an unexpected 
fortnight before returning to Rome. 

From Rome Bancroft soon set out on the northward 
journey which turned his face definitely towards home. 
There are records of what he saw and did in Florence 
and other places. Of all these pages the most notable 
are those which describe a glimpse of Byron. In a 
letter to John Murray from Byron written May 26, 
1822, from Montenero, near Leghorn, where the poet 
was living at the time with the Countess Guiccioli, there 
is a reference to Bancroftls visit, together with an allu- 
sion to the goo'd opinion in which the visitor told him his 
works were held by Goethe and the Germans, and an 
account of a visit to the Constitution. The first half 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 147 

of Byron's letter has to do with the sending of his 
daughter Allegra's body to England for burial. Ban- 
croft himself, late in life, wrote for the New York 
Ledger an article on "A Day with Lord Byron."* 
A tangible reminder of the visit, a copy of Don Juan 
given to the visitor with the author's autograph on its 
fly-leaf, was one of the treasures of Bancroft's library, 
and finally passed with all his books to the Lenox 
Library in New York. For the substance of the 
Ledger article Bancroft evidently had recourse to the 
following passages from his journal. 

"Leghorn, Mmj 21, 1822. 

" Joined Major Stith in a visit to the Constitution. 
Lord Byron came on board. We were presented to him. 
From the Constitution he went to the Ontario, where 
Capt. Chauncy received him with most distinguished 
civility. A salute was fired, the yards were manned : and 
three cheers given in most glorious and clear union." 

"May 22. Rode to Monte Nero this morning. 
Wrote to Lord Byron a short note. *Mr. Bancroft, an 
American citizen, ventures to request the honour of 
waiting on Lord Byron. Monte Nero, Wednesday 
Morning.' I sent this note and received immediately 
the following answer. 'Sir. I shall be very happy in 
your visit. Could you make it convenient about an 
hour hence — for I have been lazy to-day and am not 
yet drest — and (I am ashamed to say) hardly awake — I 

' Reprinted in the History of the Battle of Lake Erie, and 
Miscellaneous Papers. By Hon. George Bancroft, New York: 
Robert Bonner's Sons, 1891. 



148 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

have the honour to be yr obedt humble servt (Signed) 
Nod Bijroii. May 22d, 1822.' I amused myself with 
plucking myrtle and looking at the sea during the hour. 
"When I reached Lord Byron's seat, I was at once 
shown into a cool room and in a moment his Lordship 
joined me, offering me his hand. At first he asked me 
many questions about the fleet, about our officers, our 
ships, and our battles. He seemed even informed of 
the duels, which had taken place among them, knowing 
the names of the parties and the particulars of the quar- 
rels. We did not talk very long of these matters, but 
came upon literature. 

" He spoke of several countrymen. Of Ticknor, of 
Everett, of Coolidge. He spoke particularly of W. 
Irving whose Knickerbocker he seemed very fond of. 
His style he called 'rather florid,' but commended 
highly. I expressed my delight on hearing praises of 
my countrymen; but Byron replied : His feelings as to 
Irving were common to all his countrymen. 

"We spoke of Germany. He asked if I knew 
Goethe. I answered I did, and reported faithfully 
what I had heard Goethe say of him. I then told him 
of the translations which have so often been made of 
his works, and of the great admiration, which all 
Germans had for him. This B. said was new to him, 
and would serve as some solace for the abuse which he 
was constantly receiving from home. He then spoke 
of himself with the greatest frankness, of the abuse 
lavished upon him on all sides in England, of a new 
article Jeffries was preparing for him, of a letter ad- 
dressed to his publisher: 'not to me'— said he— 'for 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 149 

me they deem incorrigible.' He spoke of the king as of 
one determined to persecute him. 'I never went to 
court/ said B., 'and one evening at a ball was presented 
to the king at the king's own request.' And yet the 
king complains of B.'s having written eight lines against 
him after having been treated so civilly. 'The lines,' 
added B./ were written before I was presented to him.' 

"I mentioned Goethe's comparison of Faust and 
Manfred: and Byron observed, evidently in earnest, 
that he deemed it honour enough to have his work 
mentioned with Faust. As to its origin, Lord B. said that 
some time before he had conceived the idea of his piece, 
Monk Lewis had translated to him some of the scenes 
and had given him an idea of the plan of the piece. 

"Speaking of the immorahty of his works, he said: 
Why what are Fielding and Smollett and those authors ? 
He seemed to think there were worse things in Smollett 
than in anything he had ever written. What would 
they say, too, to the introduction to Goethe's Faust? 
Many of his friends, he said, in Italy as well as in Eng- 
land, had entreated him not to go on with Do7i Jvxin. 

"He had dedicated one of his late works to Goethe; 
but for some reason or other his publisher had omitted 
to print it.^ 

' With a letter from Italy to John Murray, October 17, 1820, 
Byron enclosed a paper headed, " For Marino Faliero. Dedica- 
tion to Baron Goethe, etc., etc., etc." It was a long production 
attacking Wordsworth, Southey and English poets in general. 
Murray seems to have taken it with insufficient seriousness, and 
Goethe never saw it till 1831, when John Murray, 3rd, handed it 
to him at Weimar. See Works of Lord Bijron. Poetry, Vol. IV. 
Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge. Footnote, p. 340. 



150 GEORGE BANCROFT [I813-I822 

"Shelley is translating Faust: 'Shelley of whom 
you may have heard many foolish stories, of his being 
a man of no principles, an atheist and all that: -but he 
is not.' 

"Lord Byron related to me the late scrape, into which 
he or his servant got at Pisa. 

"He laughed at the story Goethe tells of his murdering 
a man at Florence — hopes Goethe may not hear of this 
affair of Pisa, lest he should make a famous story out 
of it. 

"He asked me if I had come out on foot, offering me 
his carriage or his horse to return with. 

"I was taken into another room, without knowing 
that I was doing anything more than going to enjoy new 
views from the pleasant villa where Byron resides. I 
was astonished to find myself in the same room with a 
most exquisitely beautiful lady, of apparently twenty- 
five. She was on the sopha. I had the seat nearest 
her. Conversation was now carried on in Italian, of 
music, of the fine piano-fortes made in Germany, of 
Berlin and the love of Berlin ladies for Music, of Lalla 
Rookh, of France and Italy, in short of the things which 
are proper to be discussed in the company of a verj 
pretty woman. Lord Byron speaks Italian perfectly, 
the lady with the sweetest pronunciation in the world. 
She is of a delicate style of beauty: has a fine neck, a 
lovely complexion, on her cheeks the richest vermillion 
colour; a fine white forehead, a sweet little mouth, a 
graceful nose, good teeth; she is tall and her waist 
beautifully small. Innocence and repose seem the lead- 
ing expression of her countenance. Her smile is 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 151 

heavenly; her dark eyes have a calm and gentle ex- 
pression: and though I have seen more splendid beauty, 
I have seldom seen any, who produced on me a pleas- 
anter impression. 

"Lord Byron says he left Ravenna because all his 
friends were exiled. The priests stuck up an affiche 
threatening him with I know not what. The young 
men of Italy, Lord B. thinks, are in a good way; they 
long for liberty. Let them get that, and then after- 
wards study politics and understand it. 

"Lord B. wishes to go to America. He could judge 
it impartially: till now none had been there but specta- 
tors: he would go unprejudiced; at least with no pre- 
possessions for his Mother country." 

In a letter to Samuel A. Eliot, May 29, 1822, Bancroft 
gave this further account of the meeting with Byron: 

"My dearest friend, ... I have seen the opposite 
part of Tuscany too, the Val d'Arno, which is even finer 
than the fine descriptions of it can make you expect. 
Pisa round which the Appenines rise in circles of infinite 
grace, Leghorn while an American Squadron lay 
moored in the harbour. I must begin a new period to 
tell you what else I've seen: what do you think now: 
I went on board the Commodore's ship. Sir! the Consti- 
tution or Old Ironsides as she hath been rightly termed : 
Well! Is that all? Not quite. A short time after I 
had been on board a man, who wore his hair very long, 
with full fat cheeks, a healthy lively pair of dark eyes, a 
cheerful forehead, a man of gentle manners though of 



152 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

a misshapen foot, a man of rank and some note in our 
small world, came on board. Whom do you guess it 
was ? Prince Borghese ? No, the fat old goat I do not 
mean. The Tuscan Duke ? No, he is a good fellow to 
be sure, quite a radical, an honest man, who wears a 
blue coat and a white hat, and is drawn about by six 
horses. 'Tis not he I mean. Who was it then ? Why 
nothing but a poet; yet it was a pleasure to have a poet 
on board an American Squadron, and to have been 
presented to Lord Byron anywhere else, would not have 
given me half so much pleasure as it did to meet him on 
American boards and beneath the American flag. I 
was out to see him afterward, and was treated by him 
with more civility than I have ever been by any man in 
Europe. I hardly know if I ever talked with a man so 
frankly. He is very gay and fashionable in his way of 
talking, will converse of duels and horses, rows and 
swimming and good principles of Liberty, and in short 
is one of the pleasantest men in the world. Of himself 
he spoke with the utmost openness, of his success and his 
enemies. I was taken into a room of his villa: as I 
believed to enjoy the prospect toward the West: when 
my eyes were suddenly dazzled by beauty almost more 
than human and my ears soothed by the sweetest Italian 
accents from sweet Italian lips. Who was the lady? 
I know not. It was a beautiful apparition, and why 
attach harsh ideas and harsher words to one who looked 
so innocent and conversed so purely? . . ." 

On June 12th Bancroft wrote again to Eliot from 
Marseilles: "At last the day has arrived, and I hold 



1813-1822] PREPARATION 153 

myself every moment ready to obey the summons from 
the ship which is to bear me home. ... I embark on 
board the good ship Belle. We are bound for New 
York, a port which suits me quite as well as Boston 
would, since 'tis but a half day's journey more from 
New York than from the city of Boston to Worcester." 
On August 8, 1822, Bancroft wrote from Worcester 
to President Kirkland: "I owe you my intellectual 
existence, my hopes and my happiness. If I can enter 
with fine prospects the paths of usefulness and honour, 
I am indebted for this advantage to you." With the 
final page of the letter, the young student may be left 
upon the threshold of his efficient years: 

"Five days ago I reached New York, and my own 
home last evening. I have stolen a few minutes from 
my sisters to inform you of my welfare. 

"As soon as the first welcoming is over, I must begin 
to think seriously of my future destiny. Or rather I 
must decide on it. The days of tranquil uninterrupted 
study are past; it would be foolish to sigh after them; 
yet they were pleasant once, when the progress of time 
was marked only by progress in letters, and the morning 
opened on the still and cheerful continuance of the 
labours of the evening. Those days are gone by; my 
wishes now prompt me — my situation forces me — to 
action. I must resolve on my future pursuits and 
course of life immediately: for till I have a fixed resolu- 
tion I shall [word missing] and I detest and dread an 
undecided spirit. Yet I could wish to know your 
opinion or desires, if you take interest enough in me to 



154 GEORGE BANCROFT [1813-1822 

make me an object of desire or thought. I hope to 
be at Cambridge in a few days; but as I cannot tear 
myself at once from the embraces of my friends in 
Worcester, I could wish to be favoured with a few lines 
which might guide me in my decision. At any rate I 
hope soon to be near you, and to profit by your counsels. 
"Most gratefully and most sincerely, 

"George Bancroft." 



Ill 

THE PERIOD OF TEACHING 

1822—1831 

There were some harsh changes in store for Bancroft 
when his wanderings were done. Abroad he had en- 
joyed the distinction that belonged to a young, ac- 
comphshed representative of a race then seldom repre- 
sented in Europe. There was also the consciousness of 
the high place he had in the regard of those who had 
sent him away at eighteen. On his return he soon 
found himself under the scrutiny of a highly critical 
community, with standards of its own firmly fixed and 
little modified through contacts from without. His 
true friend Andrews Norton must have detected in 
Bancroft's correspondence symptoms of departure from 
the accepted modes of thought and expression. In a 
long letter of good advice, December 29, 1821, in answer 
to which Bancroft made the plea for forbearance al- 
ready quoted,^ Norton had said to the young traveller: 
" Our state of society is such as to require an extraordi- 
nary degree of attention to manners, in order that one 
may be respectable and useful. A man of learning and 

' See p. 144. 

155 



156 GEORGE BANCROFT [1822-I83i 

talents will be judged of by many who cannot judge of 
him as a man of learning and talents; and his reputation 
and influence will be in no small degree affected by their 
feelings and impressions. . . . There is no place, I 
believe, where anything implying a considerable defect 
in character, anything like ostentation or vanity, any- 
thing outre or bizarre (if I may use two French words at 
once) is observed with a keener perception of ridicule, or 
tends more to the disadvantage of him in whom it is 
jdiscovered."^ It was almost inevitable that symptoms 
detected in letters should express themselves still more 
strongly in personal intercourse with the returned 
traveller. Such expressions took place at once — and 
first of all in Bancroft's relations with Andrews 
Norton, who is even said to have been subjected 
immediately to kisses on both cheeks, a form of 
greeting certainly both outre and bizarre in the Cam- 
bridge of 1822. 

It is unnecessary to go into the details of the breach 
between the two scholars who, as the reader will have 
seen, had stood upon terms of affectionate intimacy 
tempered only by their disparity of years. That any 
estrangement should have arisen was the greater pity 
because it was so largely a matter of externals, 
which at that time Bancroft might have modified 
enough to win himself a surer approval in the com- 
munity of which Andrews Norton was an influential 
member. "He had brought from Europe," writes 
one of his warmest admirers,^ "a new manner, full 

' From letter lent by Prof. C. E. Norton. 

' W. M. Sloane in Enajdopcedia Britannica, Vol. XXVI, 1902. 



1822-1831] PERIOD OF TEACHING 157 

of the affectations of ardent youth, and this he 
wore without ease in a society highly satisfied with 
itself; the young knight-errant was therefore sub- 
jected to considerable ridicule." And in the face of 
ridicule the good opinion of one's neighbours is hard 
to hold. 

Bancroft's lack of popularity with the dominant 
Harvard and Boston circle has commonly been ascribed 
to his espousing the Democratic side in local and 
national politics. This came later, and doubtless played 
its important part. But it needs no clairvoyance to see 
in the unpropitious beginning of Bancroft's resumed 
relation with the Cambridge community some explana- 
tion of a condition that was far from fortunate. The 
sensitive man who places himself early in a trying 
light is not the best person, as time goes on, to get him- 
self out of it and to stand just where his best qualities 
will always be the most conspicuous. It is much easier 
for the spectator, removed by four score of years, to 
suggest what might have been brought about, than for 
the actor, young and with many valid grounds for self- 
confidence, to take the wisest step at every turn. One 
immediate course was comparatively clear, and at 
least incidentally it permitted Bancroft to make some 
requital to Harvard College for his immeasurable debt 
to her authorities. A tutorship in Greek at once 
presented itself, and for the college year of 1822-1823 
Bancroft filled the post. A letter to his friend Eliot 
shows him established in his new work, yet looking 
forward to the ministerial labours for which also he had 
been fitting himself. 



158 GEORGE BANCROFT [1822-I83i 

To S. A. Eliot. 

"Cambridge, September 24, 1822. 

"My dear friend Eliot. — ^That I have safely returned 
to my own country, that I have found all my nearer 
kindred in good condition, prospering and happy, and 
that employment has already been found for me are 
certainly reasons for gratitude to the very good Being, 
who has drawn the lines of my life so pleasantly. You 
will rejoice with me in the midst of these happy things; 
and now in writing I feel them the more deeply for the 
belief, which I have, that you will take an interest in them, 
and feel a moment's satisfaction at hearing of my welfare. 

"Now that I am at home my first labour must be to 
make myself acquainted with the state of feeling about 
me. I have grown quite estranged from my own 
country and countrymen: it has been my lot to spend 
four years in the land of strangers ; my ways of thinking 
are I firmly trust worthy of New England; but my 
manner of expressing them may have a foreign char- 
acter; and it is an affair of no small importance to be 
able to speak our opinions in an impressive and ac- 
ceptable manner. Having heard for so long a time the 
accents of foreign tongues, I forget in some measure, 
that Chatham's language is mine too; and many an 
unfortunate French or German phrase or sweet Italian 
is interceding for utterance, when I should in decency 
talk nothing but plain English. These little difficulties 
will pass soon, and before winter, I expect to find all the 
superfluous excitability, which I gathered in Southern 
countries, chilled to a calmness fit for our colderlatitudes. 

"It is now a little more than a month since I landed 



1822-1831] PERIOD OF TEACHING 159 

at New York. The first sensations which are felt on 
seeing one's own country again after a long absence, are 
more pleasant, more exquisite and more intense, than 
I could have believed. In entering the bay of New 
York I could do nothing but admire; I thought I had 
never seen such deep and beautiful green as I then saw 
all along the Jersey shore; it seemed to me, that no 
country has such neat and pretty villages, such cheerful 
townships, such a transparent atmosphere and glowing 
sky as our own. I was inclined to find everything 
agreeable and beautiful. Yet on travelling from New 
York to Worcester I could not but feel that, pleasant 
as the general surface of our country may be, it is not 
formed after the higher laws of beauty. I look in vain 
for the land of romance, for the bold scenery or the 
luxuriant landscapes, which charmed me in other 
countries; I find it necessary to check those feelings, 
which find their gratification in contemplating exultingly 
the richness and daring contrasts of natural scenery. 
I remember, that our country is the land of our hearts 
for different and more serious reasons: I think of it as 
the place of refuge for pure religion, for civil liberties, 
for domestic happiness, and for all the kindly affections 
of social life; and while I am still dwelling on these 
reflections and the calm promise of comfort and pure 
enjoyment, which they inspire, I find myself at my 
Father's door, and the embrace of a mother and sisters 
tells me, that my hopes are not false ones. I love my 
country; I love it deeply; all my fair promise of useful- 
ness and good name are connected with it: my chance 
of being remembered rests upon my attachment to it; 



160 GEORGE BANCROFT [1822-I83i 

I would not desert it for all the high enjoyment of the 
fine arts, or all the luxuries of life, which are so common 
in Italy. I like its pure soil, and its calm, sober, manly 
inhabitants; I like most of all their uncorrupted hearts, 
the general purity of their devotions, the earnestness and 
sincerity of their affections. 

"After spending about ten days with my friends and 
kin in the country, I came to Cambridge, where I was 
indebted to your sister for a very happy week, which 
I passed in her hospitable house. We cannot but be 
happy, when we are always in the presence of the virtu- 
ous and contented. While at Mrs. Norton's, I felt 
more forcibly than ever the truth of what you loved to 
inculcate; that America is the country, where domestic 
happiness is best known and most duly prized; that 
stability of character, resulting from a proper union of 
mind, good principles and intelligence, gives the promise 
of respectability and happiness; and that of all bless- 
ings, which ever fall to the lot of man, a virtuous and 
affectionate wife is the one most highly to be valued. 
After spending the Commencement season very de- 
lightfully at or near Cambridge, I went with Dr. Kirk- 
land to Providence, where we were much entertained 
by various amusing customs of the place, and were also 
amused and gratified by the civilities of the good people 
of Providence and the performances of the young men, 
who took their degrees this year. On returning from 
this Rhode Island Commencement I went again into the 
country; my first business there was, to write a couple 
of sermons; and ten days ago I began preaching in my 
Father's pulpit. Last Sunday I was sent to Bolton to 



1822-1831] PERIOD OF TEACHING 161 

officiate in the absence of the clergyman, who on that 
day preached for my Father; so I now consider myself 
as engaged in the good work, and mean soon to declare 
myself a candidate. In preaching I shall endeavour 
to be earnest and impressive rather than oratorical, and 
hope to write serious evangelical sermons, rather than 
fashionable ones. To speak from the pulpit is a very 
solemn thing; and as the sacredness of the place guaran- 
tees the speaker from interruption,, it should also serve 
to warn him against attempts at vain display, or useless 
exhibition of talents or learning. . . . 

"The place of younger Greek tutor became vacant at 
Commencement: The corporation have done me the 
honour to appoint me to it. I feel obliged to them for 
this early testimony of their confidence. I have ac- 
cepted it but only for a year, and in the mean time can 
at my leisure consider the state of society at home, and 
decide on the course of life, which may seem most 
eligible to me. I shall probably preach in the mean- 
time, and the result of my deliberations will very likely 
be that I shall be settled as a clergyman. . . ." 

Within a few months he was writing to Eliot again, 
telling of the difficulties he had overcome in reorganising 
the methods of teaching Greek at Cambridge, and con- 
fiding to his friend a plan which was to have an im- 
portant bearing upon his immediate future. 

To S. A. Eliot. 

"Cambridge, December 3, 1822. 
"... Shall I tell you a plan of mine? It is still a 
great secret: nobody knows aught of it at home except 



1G2 GEORGE BANCROFT [1822-I83i 

Mr. Everett, Mr. Ticknor, and Dr. Kirkland, who may 
have told it to Mr. Lowell, who may have told it to 
dozens. I have considered the nature of high schools, 
grammar-schools, Gymnasia, Classical schools and the 
like: I have consulted the books, which treat of edu- 
cation: I have reflected on the means and end of educa- 
tion. Now I am going to turn scJioolmaster. I long 
to become an independent man, namely a man, who 
lives by his own labours. Mr. Cogswell has seen so 
much of the world, that he knows it and its folly: he 
will join me in my scheme: we will together establish 
a school, the end of which is to be the moral and intel- 
lectual maturity of the mind of each boy we take charge 
of; and the means are to be first and foremost instruc- 
tion in the classics. We intend going into the country, 
and we shall choose a pleasant site, where nature in her 
loveliness may breathe calmness and inspire purity. 
We will live retired from the clamours of scandal and the 
disputes of the irresolute. We will delight ourselves 
with letters, and instead of warring against the corpora- 
tion and contending with scandalous reports, we will 
train up a few minds to virtue and honour, and hope 
that when we die there will be some hands to throw 
flowers over our tombs. Our school is to be set on foot 
directly after the next Commencement. I am engaged 
for a year at Cambridge, and Mr. Cogswell must finish 
his library. Then we hope to enter on a pleasanter 
kind of duty; we will plant gardens, lay out walks, 
beautify nature, and propagate good knowledge. We 
call our establishment a school, and we mean to con- 
sider ourselves as schoolmasters. We might indeed 



1822-1831] PERIOD OF TEACHING 163 

assume a pompous name, speak of instituting a Gym- 
nasium : but let the name be modest. I like the sound 
of the word schoolmaster, A rose does indeed by any 
name smell as sweet; and I hope nobody will like me 
the less for assuming the character of a pedagogue. " 

As the year at Cambridge wore on, Bancroft found 
himself less and less satisfied with his surroundings: 
"For myself," he wi'ote to Eliot, May 10, 1823, "I have 
found College a sickening and wearisome place. Not 
one spring of comfort have I had to draw from. My 
state has been nothing but trouble, trouble, trouble, and 
I am heartily glad that the end of the year is coming so 
soon." In the same letter he said: "I have been 
preaching, might perhaps if I would,. be advantageously 
settled. But I think it better to wage the warfare of 
learning than of faith, for the plain reason that I hold 
myself better fitted for the first, than for the last. Our 
country needs good instructors more than good preach- 
ers, and so I shall stick to the first business, spite of the 
temptation of leading the easier life of a parochial 
clergyman." 

Among the Bancroft papers I find a package of 
eleven sermons in manuscript. Upon most of them the 
dates and places of their delivery are endorsed. The 
dates sange from September of 1822 to July of 1823. 
Some of the sermons were thought worthy of repeti- 
tion, one of them bearing the record of seven deliver- 
ances. During the eleven months covered by these 
endorsements, thirty-six preachings are recorded. 
With a small allowance for omissions of the record, it 



164 GEORGE BANCROFT [i822-i83i 

appears that Bancroft preached practically four times 
in each month of this period. The leading clergymen 
of Boston and its neighbourhood gave him the freedom of 
their pulpits. Of the sermons themselves it must be 
said that they seem to need all the aid which their 
writer's personality could have brought to them. They . 
are marked less by a distinctively religious sentiment— 
though that is by no means always lacking— than by a 
stron^'g ethical and philosophical bent. The unobscure 
truths which the preacher set forth in somewhat labor- 
iously rounded periods smacked rather of the academic 
essay than of a message burning to be delivered. It may 
be that other sermons of the period, by novitiates who 
persevered and attained distinction, would make a 
similar impression upon a reader to-day. Nevertheless 
one cannot but sympathise with Bancroft m decidmg 
so soon that preaching was not his vocation.' 

At about the same time Bancroft published his first 
book, and with it brought to an end his poetic, as he 
was already concluding his collegiate and ministerial, 
career. His European diaries and letters have already 
shown him busily engaged in metrical composition. 
The volume of Poems, a slender book of seventy-seven 
> It does not appear that his hearers, at least in his father's 
parish, were any better satisfied. "The tradition m Worcester 
is that his manner was regarded as somewhat artificial and as so 
different from that which was usual at the time m the pulpit as 
to prevent religious services as conducted by him from being 
wholly acceptable either to his father or his father s congrega- 
tion " Samuel Swett Green, in Proceedings of American Anti- 
quarian Society, April, 1891. u, wu ,,^„«,t 
Emerson, on the other hand, thought favourably of the young 
preacher. On January 3, 1823, when he was twenty years old, 



1822-1831] PERIOD OF TEACHING 165 

pages, bears on its title-page the date of 1823, with 
Cambridge as the place of publication. The dedication 
to President Kirkland is dated Northampton, Septem- 
ber, 1823, and its most considerable poem, "Pictures 
of Rome," is dated Worcester, July, 1823. All the 
other poems appear to have been written while he was 
abroad. Indeed, most of them are to be found, lacking 
their final polish, in his journals. The influence of 
Byron is so apparent in them that one can hardly help 
asking whether the young traveller, in his more com- 
placent moments, may not have aspired to become an 
American Childe Harold. Subjective visions of nature 
and art are the prevailing themes. The naivete of 
youth makes itself frequently felt. Of poetic spon- 
taneity there is little, though, especially in the lament 
for his unreturning sailor-brother which fills a page of 
the "Piciures of Rome," there are genuine expressions 
of deep feeling. Yet the book leaves an impression 
kindred to that of the manuscript sermons — that poetry 
also was a pursuit to which Bancroft's years of devotion 
were wisely limited. Very soon after the publication of 
the book, Bancroft, in writing to President Kirkland 
(November 4, 1823), seems to feel that it "has not been 

he wrote to a friend: "I am happy to contradict the rumors 
about Bancroft. I heard him preach at New South a few 
Sabbaths since, and was much dehghted with his eloquence. So 
were all. He needs a great deal of cutting and pruning, but we 
think him an infant Hercules. All who know him agree in this, 
that he has improved his time thoroughly in Gottingen. He 
has become a perfect Greek scholar, and knows well all that he 
pretends to know; as to divinity, he has never studied, but was 
approbated abroad." See Cabot's Memoir of Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, I, pp. 93-94. 



166 GEORGE BANCROFT [1822-I83i 

much cared for," and goes on to say, "I have rather 
the patience of mind, required for the pursuits of 
learning and efforts in prose than the bold inven- 
tion which gives life to original [word missing]. But 
such as our powers are, we must be content with 
[word missing] only endeavoring to make the most 
of them " It is the tradition, perhaps with fact for a 
basis, that in later life Bancroft took every means to 
collect and destroy all obtainable copies of his Poems, 
as unworthy to stand beside his "efforts in prose. 

The preaching and the poetical venture both belonged 
to Bancroft's year at Harvard, though the Poems were 
made public after its completion. It has been seen that 
Bancroft's next step-the establishment of a school for 
boys-was definitely planned before he had spent many 
months in the Harvard tutorship. As early as 1819 
Everett had written to Bancroft in Germany: Could 
you have a liberal and proper support, I know no better 
place for you than a learned School, and the College 
would be indebted to you, for the most important aid 
in carrying into execution the projected reforms in 
education. We can do nothing at Cambridge till we 
contrive the means of having the boys sent to us tar 
better fitted than they are now." Bancroft'^ own early 
interest in the project has been recorded among his 
European experiences.^ The care of young Frederic 
Henry Hedge in Germany, where Bancroft placed and 
visited him in important schools, had thrown much 
light upon educational problems and methods: in 

» See pp. 54, 65, 91, 128. 
2 See p. 97. 



1822-1831] PERIOD OF TEACHING 167 

Berlin, as we have seen/ he had paid special heed to 
Schleiermacher's lectures on education. Besides all 
this, his love of sound learning and his hard-earned 
experience of its acquisition were important qualifica- 
tions for his new task in many of its aspects. 

His associate in the undertaking, Joseph Green Cogs- 
well, subsequently librarian of the Astor Library in New 
York, had been more closely identified with Bancroft's 
European experiences than it was necessary for the 
preceding chapter to indicate. Many letters passed 
between the two Americans in Europe, and in Bancroft's 
letters to friends at home, there were, as we have seen, 
frequent admiring allusions to Cogswell. When they 
found themselves together at Cambridge — Bancroft as 
tutor in Greek, Cogswell as college librarian and pro- 
fessor of mineralogy and geology — there were naturally 
many sympathies to bind them each to each. Their com- 
mon dissatisfaction with their surroundings only served 
to make the bond more close. George Ticknor, writ- 
ing to his brother-in-law Samuel A. Eliot, February 1, 
1823, said of the plan which Bancroft and Cogswell had 
formed: "This purpose arises mainly from their discon- 
tent at their situation in Cambridge."^ He lamented 
their leaving the college, and felt that time and patience 
would have removed the causes of their discontent. 
Col. T. W. Higginson has printed a letter which his 
father, treasurer of the college, wrote in 1833: "Cogs- 
well," he said, "could not manage things under control 

^See p. 90. 

^ Life of Joseph Green Cogswell, as Sketched in His Letters, 
p. 135. 



168 GEORGE BANCROFT [1822-183 1 

of others and so left college." The judgment of Bancroft 
was even more severe: "His manners, style of writing, 
Theology, etc., bad, and as a Tutor only the laughing 
butt of all the College. Such an one was easily marked 
as unfit for a School."* This prescience was doubtless 
more easy in 1833 than it would have been ten years 
earlier, yet it helps one to appreciate Bancroft's com- 
plaint of "trouble, trouble, trouble" as his "state" in 
Cambridge. 

Cogswell's qualifications for the new enterprise were 
very like those of Bancroft. His correspondence in 
Europe shows him — for a single example of parallel 
tastes — keenly interested in the school of Fellenberg at 
Berne,^ where agriculture was combined with book- 
learning. His scholarship, like Bancroft's, was con- 
sidered sound and enlightened. In the point of age he 
had the advantage of fourteen years for learning what 
he wished and was best fitted to do. Indeed, it must have 
appeared that Bancroft at twenty-three could hardly 
have had a better associate than Cogswell at thirty-seven. 

To all the qualifications and motives must be added 
their genuine impulse to advance the cause of education 
in their native land. This they felt they could do best 
by making an entirely fresh experiment — for such was 
the Round Hill School at Northampton, Massachusetts, 
which they established in the autumn of 1823. In 
certain of its characteristics, it was a sporadic growth, 
not perpetuated in type; in certain essentials — es- 
pecially that of the social character of its support — it 

' See Harvard Graduates Magazine, September, 1897. 
^ See Life of Joseph Green Cogswell, pp. 80, 87. 



1822-1S31] PERIOD OF TEACHING 169 

was the prototype of two or three of the most prosperous 
boys' schools of this later day. The very names of its 
pupils might be mistaken for those of the boys now at 
one of the existing schools drawing chiefly upon Boston 
and New York/ The aims and achievements of the 
enterprise are worth regarding somewhat closely, not 
only for their bearing upon the life of Bancroft, but also 
for their significance in the progress of American 
education. 

On June 9, 1823, Cogswell wrote to his sister: "On 
looking around Worcester, for a place to fix our pro- 
jected school, Mr. Bancroft and myself did not find one 
exactly to our minds, and concluded to go as far as 
Northampton, and examine the neighborhood there. 
Our views were much better answered here. About 
half a mile from the village of Northampton, on the 
brow of a beautiful Kill, overlooking the Connecticut, 
and the rich plain through which it flows, and the pictur- 
esque hills which form its banks, we found two houses 
to be let for a very small rent, and as all the circumstan- 
ces connected with the situation were exactly to our 
minds, we concluded at once to begin our experiment 
there. Accordingly we have engaged the houses from 
September, and expect to enter upon our new duties the 

' In the list of Massachusetts boys, for example, appear three 
Amorys, two Appletons, two Blakes, besides Francis Boott, 
John Murray Forbes and John Lothrop Motley; in the New York 
list there are three Livingstons, two Brevoorts, Samuel G. Ward 
and Le Grand Cannon; from the South came Carters, Middletons, 
Habershams and many others. It is the exceptional name, from 
North or South, which does not call up some association with a 
well-known family. 



170 GEORGE BANCROFT [1822-I83i 

first of October."* On the evening of the opening day 
Bancroft wrote to President Kirkland in fervid language 
about the beauties of nature surrounding him, and the 
influences he expected them to impart. "Were I always 
to have a meadow like this of Northampton before me, 
and such peaceful mountains/* he said, "I should forget 
that iEtna has its volcanoes and Sjria its sands„ We 
have been in full employment for some days. Mr. 
Cogswell is in fine spirits, and matters work together 
prodigiously well for our good. We have passed the 
day in receiving our pupils and in conversing with their 
parents, and 'locating' the little fellows/' A month 
later, November 5, 1823, Bancroft wrote in a letter to 
Edward Everett : " We are going on very smoothly and 
very happily. It is enough to be free from the perpetual 
interference and unsolicited judgments of others. At 
Northampton we are left entirely to ourselves; and there 
is some comfort in shaping one's conduct by one's own 
inclinations and views, without being obliged to bend to 
the ignorance of others, who undertake to controul, 
when they do not understand. Our little family is 
fast forming habits of obedience and order; and as 
confinement and retirement are no evils to a scholar, 
there is nothing which is unpleasant in our situation." 
What, then, were the special characteristics of this 
Round Hill School to which Bancroft was giving: him- 

* See Life of Joseph Green Cogswell, pp. 135-136. — The houses 
were first rented, then bought for $12,000; subsequently (1829) 
the "Round Hill Institution" was chartered, stock was issued, 
and the directors rented the property from the stockholders. 
Cogswell, jjp. 152, 103. 



1822-1831] PERIOD OF TEACHING 171 

self with so much of enthusiasm? The teachers, the 
taught and the lookers-on have all left their definitions 
of its aims and achievements. From these joint 
sources may be drawn enough to reconstruct the enter- 
prise even more fully than the present occasion de- 
mands. 

In a Prospectus which Cogswell and Bancroft issued 
in 1823, and in a pamphlet, "Some Account of the 
School for the Liberal Education of Boys established 
on Round Hill, Northampton, Massachusetts, by 
Joseph G. Cogswell and George Bancroft," which they 
issued three years later, their purposes find full ex- 
pression. The advantages of beautiful surroundings in 
nature are set forth. A boy of nine is old enough to 
commence his regular studies; a boy of more than 
twelve is too old and, except in unusual circumstances, 
will not be received. It is with boys rather than young 
men that the school proposes to deal. The discipline 
is to be precautionary rather than punitive. English, 
mathematics and the modern languages are to be 
taught for all their indirect no less than their direct ad- 
vantages. The uses of a good library, for both pupils 
and instructors, are insisted upon. "Wherever good 
books are brought together, they will find readers." 
All pupils must learn Latin, as "essential to a practical 
education." Greek is left to the decision of the par- 
ents, though the Prospectus makes it evident that a 
decision in its favour is warmly desired. In "Some 
Account, etc.," there is a passage touching the value of 
the classics in general, so characteristic in substance and 
form as to stand as a fair specimen of the Round Hill 



172 GEORGE BANCROFT [1822-1831 

declarations: "Acquaintance with a particular science 
may prepare for a particular station ; but the principles 
of virtue and prudence are of universal value, and, in 
connection with habits of intellectual action and a taste 
for intellectual pleasures, form the characteristics of 
liberal education. These principles are universally the 
same in whatever age they may have been uttered, in 
whatever language they may have been expressed. 
Here is the reason, why the ancient orators, poets, and 
philosophers are still to be read. Moral truths are 
eternal ones. The aspect of every science is changing 
as fast as new discoveries are made; and new investiga- 
tions render ancient treatises obsolete. Both [But?] 
Homer and Herodotus cannot become antiquated, until 
simplicity and moral feeling change their nature, nor 
the works of men like Sophocles and Demosthenes lose 
their dignity, till the laws of finished beauty and 
eloquence, till reason and sentiment become differently 
modified. Nor will these and some few other ancient 
writers cease to be of practical value, till the number of 
powerful writers shall have grown so large as to hide 
them in the crowd, or the light of genius have shed 
abroad its bright beams so abundantly as to outshine 
their lustre." 

The "practical value" of the classics has been a fruit- 
ful theme of discussion since the days of Round Hill. 
So too has the question of physical exercise in schools. 
The pamphlet from which a passage has just been 
quoted deals with this matter at length: "Games and 
healthful sports, promoting hilarity and securing a just 
degree of exercise, are to be encouraged. We are deeply 



1822-1831] PERIOD OF TEACHING 173 

impressed with the necessity of uniting physical with 
moral education; and are particularly favoured in 
exercising our plans of connecting them by the assistance 
of a pupil and friend of Jahn, the greatest modern 
advocate of gymnastics. We have proceeded slowly 
, in our attempts, for the undertaking was a new one; 
but now we see ourselves near the accomplishment of 
our views. The whole subject of the union of moral 
and physical education is a great deal simpler, than it 
may first appear. And here, too, we may say, that we 
were the first in the new continent to connect gymnastics 
with a purely literary establishment." 

Parents are enjoined against providing their boys with 
pocket-money. "Religion, as a principle, must be 
quickened and exercised during the period of educa- 
tion" — but without estranging the pupil from the 
religious usages of his parents. "Dress is to be regu- 
lated with reference to neatness, economy, and cleanli- 
ness." Let the masters themselves describe its regula- 
tion, and incidentally help the readers to visualise the 
school-boy of eighty years ago: "The dress which is 
adopted among us is as follows: Coat or roundabout 
and trowsers of blue grey broadcloth with bright but- 
tons, waistcoat of light blue kersey-mere, for winter. 
Blue broadcloth is allowed instead of blue grey. Blue 
nankin or cotton suit complete, for summer; and for 
holidays, blue silk or bombazine coat or roundabout, 
white jacket and trowsers, drill or marseilles. Our 
object is, to establish a general uniformity. A plain 
blue cloth cap in winter, or a straw hat in summer, is 
allowed, instead of a hat." 



174 GEORGE BANCROFT [1822-I83l 

For a glimpse of the daily life under the conditions 
set forth so earnestly by the masters, we may turn to 
The United States Literary Gazette for February 15, 
1825. An article on "The School at Northampton" 
describes in glowing terms the ideals and qualifications 
of Cogswell, Bancroft and their assistants. A para- 
graph near the end of the article runs as follows : "Our 
readers may wish to know, particularly, how the day is 
passed at this school. They rise in winter at six; and, 
after the devotional exercises of the morning, are busy 
with teaching and study till eight, at which time all 
breakfast. They then engage in vigorous exercise till 
nine, when the season for intellectual labor again com- 
mences, and continues till noon. Two hours are al- 
lowed for exercise, dining, and for rest, when, at two, 
studies are resumed, and continued till four. An hour 
and a half is then employed in the sports and exercises 
suited to the season. The evening meal is over by six, 
when some time is passed in attending to declamations, 
and then about an hour and a half is given to study, and 
the exercises of devotion. The instructors and pupils 
spend a few moments around the fire, and the boys are 
sent to bed at half past eight. In the morning and 
evening religious services they chiefly use the excellent 
prayers of the Episcopal Church. The collects and 
various services furnish a variety of earnest and suitable 
petitions. Saturday evening they meet, but not for 
study. At that time exhortations are made to the boys 
on their studies and on subjects suggested by the events 
of the week. The older boys read the New Testament 
aloud to the school. On Sunday the smaller boys read 



1822-1831] PERIOD OF TEACHING 175 

aloud in the Bible. The older ones are engaged with 
works of Paley, Porteus, or Mason, books where the 
duties of religion are inculcated without any of the 
spirit of party." According to this article there were 
then forty boys in the school. In the first eight years 
of its existence there were two hundred and ninety- 
three.^ 

It is a fortunate circumstance that one of these boys, 
gifted in later life with no mean powers of description, 
wrote and published his recollections of the school. 
This may now be found in the volume, A Sheaf of 
Papers, by Thomas Gold Appleton. Here one learns 
that Bancroft himself did much of the teaching, and 
directed the work of the assistant instructors, American 
and foreign. Cogswell was rather the "father of the 
community" and its general manager. The teaching 
was by no means confined to books. There were 
sketching and riding classes, and in a garden near the 
gymnasium, equipped with German appliances, "many 
infant lessons in farming were learned." One of the 
institutions of the place — at least till a boy's flirtation 
with a pretty vender of doughnuts and pies brought it to 
a close — was "Crony Village," a little colony of the 
boys' own building. Supplied with bricks, mortar, 
beams and boards, they made small houses for them- 
selves, and, generally in families of two, rejoiced in 
cooking over their own hearthstones potatoes and game, 
perhaps some of the wild animals they were encour- 
aged to trap, or the birds shot with bow and arrow 
in the neighbouring woods. Another institution was 

^ See Life of Joseph Green Cogswell, p. 353. 



176 GEORGE BANCROFT [1S22-1831 

the annual journey of the school. With horses and 
waggons enough for about half of the boys to ride they 
set forth. By the " ride and tie " method they proceeded, 
in the expedition described by Mr. Appleton, as far as 
Saybrook, Connecticut, where they camped and enjoyed 
capital fishing in the smack provided for their use. 
It was doubtless thought to be in pursuance of the same 
healthful purpose that the boys were got up at six 
o'clock in winter, to wash in water crusted with ice 
which they used to grind against their cheeks like soap, 
and to study, partially by candle-light, till breakfast 
time. The table was good; yet it may be imagined 
that some of the boys would have enjoyed it more if 
conversation in foreign languages had not sometimes 
been prescribed as the accompaniment to food. It is 
probable that cake twice a week at tea was more highly 
relished. A popular house-keeper and her daughter 
supplied a valuable feminine element in the establish- 
ment. A boys' school without pillow-fights would be an 
anomaly indeed. Of these there is a reminiscence which 
may involve Bancroft himself. "On one occasion 
two stories were fighting for their platforms, the lower 
attempting by the stairs to carry the upper by storm. 
In the midst of the noisiest of the contest, a head- 
master was discerned ascending the stairs to make an 
end of this warfare. Seeing him, the fury of the com- 
batants redoubled, and it was not without a certain 
sinful pleasure that the boys saw him lifted from his 
footing to the lowest stair, by the Homeric onslaught of 
one of the most active youths. In a moment the pre- 
tended accident of mistaking him for a boy was qualified 



1822-1831] PERIOD OF TEACHING 177 

by apology, and offers of the profusest sympathy. His 
assailant was too well hidden in the clouds of soldiers 
to be discovered or punished." 

Even if this last scene from life at Round Hill shows 
a head-master at the mercy of his boys, it is evident that 
the school was in general a delightful place. The 
pupils treasured its memory as one of their best pos- 
sessions. Yet before Bancroft had had four years of it 
there are indications that it was beginning to pall upon 
him, and that he felt his true vocation still undiscovered. 
In a letter to President Kirkland, August 6, 1827, he 
wrote: "Perhaps you may like to hear from me, how 
I am situated in mind, affections, and estate ? I would 
not undertake to draw for you a picture of my mind, 
though I might have little to conceal. For what need is 
there of reserve in a man, whose passions cannot gain 
strength, because every reasonable wish is gratified, and 
whose thoughts are kept from wandering by occupations 
which crowd the hours of day with employment ? Yet 
there may sometimes arise unchecked a wish for greater 
leisure, to be devoted to letters/ I sigh for the enjoyment 
of study and the delight and pride of new acquisitions; 
a spirit within me repines, that my early manhood should 
be employed in restraining the petulance and assisting 

* In the Educational Review for April, 1891, the Rev. George 
E. EUis, recaUing his school-days at Round Hill, throws some 
light upon Bancroft's concern for his own studies. While sup- 
posed to be superintending the study of the boys, he was apt, 
says Dr. Ellis, to become so engrossed in some book of his own, 
that pupils would creep on all fours out of the room. " He was 
absent-minded, dreamy and often in abstracted moods as well 
as very near-sighted. I have seen him come into the recitation 



178 GEORGE BANCROFT liS22-i83i 

the weakness of children, when I am conscious of 
sufficient courage to sustain colHsions with men; the 
desires of ambition seem to have fixed themselves on no 
definite object; I cannot yet say, what proof that I have 
Hved, I may most desire to leave after me; I cannot 
pierce the veil that hides the future, nor even say to 
myself what my own heart would prefer. Yet I rejoice 
in my dependence on a merciful Providence, I am con- 
tent to apply myself to my present duties with earnest- 
ness and fidelity; I will meet the future as it approaches, 
and shape my course according to the stream on which 
I sail." 

There is no lack of evidence that Bancroft did apply 
himself faithfully to the present duties at Round Hill. 
It does not appear that the pupils remembered his 
teaching with the pleasure that marked their recollec- 
tions of Cogswell. The Rev. George E. Ellis, writing 
as an old "Round-Hiller," helps us to apprehend the 
situation: "I suppose that Mr. Bancroft, though 
meaning in all things to be kind and faithful, was, by 
temperament and lack of sympathy with the feelings 
and ways of young boys, disqualified from winning their 
regard and from being helpful and stimulating to them. 
He seemed to be more earnestly bent on learning for 
himself than on helping them to learn. His single year 

room at an exercise held before breakfast, with a shpper or shoe 
on one foot and a boot on the other. More than once he sent 
me across the road to his hbrary for his spectacles. These were 
generally to be found shut into a book, which he had been reading 
before going to bed. The boys, who called him familiarly 'the 
Critter,' were fond of playing tricks upon him, which they could 
do with impunity, owing to his shortness of vision." 



1822-1831] PERIOD OF TEACHING 179 

as a tutor in Harvard College, before going to Round 
Hill, resulted in experiences wholly unsatisfactory to 
himself as well as to the beloved President Kirkland, 
his associates in the faculty, and the students. There 
was a continual restiveness and embroilment excited by 
what were viewed as his crotchets. It should be said, 
however, that these infelicities showed themselves only 
in Mr. Bancroft's relations with boyish pupils. For 
scholars of maturer years and high ambitions, he was 
a most warm-hearted, kindly, and helpful friend, doing 
them various and highly valued service."* 

If Bancroft had been an entire success, as a teacher, at 
Round Hill, one might expect to find indications that 
he enjoyed the work, and abandoned it reluctantly. 
But the note of regret is lacking in the record. On 
August 30, 1831, he wrote to Edward Everett: " In one 
short month I cease to be a school-master. "What is to 
be done ? My plan is to maintain my independence if 
I can. Should circumstances favour, I think I shall 
succeed; remaining, however, a dweller on the banks 
of the Connecticut." More than a year before writing 
this letter Bancroft had sold his interest in the school 
to Cogswell, remaining temporarily as a salaried in- 
structor. It was upon the financial rock that Cogs- 
well's bark was soon to come to grief. The expense 
of carrying out the generous plans which gave the school 
so much of its distinction, together with the difficulty of 
collecting the bills of certain easy-going patrons in the 
South, made the burden too heavy for Cogswell to 
carry indefinitely. In January, 1834, he was advertis- 

' See Educational Review, April, 1891. 



180 GEORGE BANCROFT [1822-1831 

incv Round Hill for sale, and preparing to take a teaching 
po'sition in Raleigh, North Carolina/ The experiment 
had proved a failure, from the worst effects of which 
Bancroft had saved himself by an earlier retirement. 
Yet it was an experiment which reflected nothing but 
credit upon its makers. Regarded either as a fore- 
shadowing of what a more highly developed Tran- 
scendentalism might produce in New England or as a 
premature attempt to give the chosen youth of America 
an anointment with the oil of education a little above 
their fellows, it stands forth as a piece of embodied 
idealism which the student of our intellectual phenom- 
ena cannot afford to overlook. 

Had Bancroft confined his activities through the 
years at Round Hill to school-teaching, the closing of 
the school might well have proved disastrous to him. 
But it was then that he was putting to the test the powers 
of his pen. In 1824, 1825 and 1826 respectively ap- 
peared three text-books, a Greek Grammar, a Latin 
Reader, and a Cornelius Nepos, adapted from German 
editions to meet the need soon discovered by Bancroft 
in the American school-room. In 1824 he published in 
Boston a translation of the Reflections on the Politics 
of Ancient Greece by his Gottingen master, Heeren. 
This was followed in 1829 by two volumes, bearing the 
Northampton imprint, of Heeren's History of the 
Political System of Europe and its Colonies, from the 
Discovery of America to the Independence of the 
American Continent. Of this work Bancroft trans- 
lated only a part, supervising the rest. The first of 
1 See Life of Joseph Green Cogswell, p. 184. 



1S22-1S31] PERIOD OF TEACHING 181 

these translations, besides attracting the attention of the 
Edinburgh Review, was immediately reprinted at 
Oxford without intimation that Bancroft was responsi- 
ble for its English form. All these undertakings had 
their value in acquainting the editor and translator with 
such technical knowledge of book production as the 
author needs. In the same period Bancroft was giving 
himself the far more important training of the author 
by abundant writing — especially in articles for the 
North American Review. Between 1823 and 1834 
seventeen of these articles stand to Bancroft's credit. 
They deal chiefly with themes of classical and European 
scholarship, though in January of 1831, there was a v 

paper on "The Bank of the United States" and later 
in the same year an article on Harvard University, 
supporting the project to increase the college library. 
The Bank article, occupying over forty pages of the / 

Review, was not so much an attack upon the institution 
as an argument against the support it had received in 
the Report written by McDuffie for the Congressional 
Committee of Ways and Means. Bancroft's paper was 
a careful, simple piece of writing showing much study 
and thought. The reader is surprised to-day, as 
Bancroft was in 1831, to find it ending with a declara- 
tion in favour of renewing the charter of the bank and 
the promise of a second article on this phase of the 
subject. Bancroft wrote a second article which A. H. 
Everett, the editor, was unwilling to print; and three 
years later Bancroft, indignant at the gratuitous conclu- 
sion of his first article, and at the refusal of the second, 
compelled this written acknowledgment: "The last 



182 GEORGE BANCROFT [1822-I83i 

sentence in the article on the Bank in the January 
number of the North American Review was not written 
by you nor seen by you before the number was printed 
and published." 

The sixth of the seventeen North American articles 
was a paper on "The Life and Genius of Goethe," pub- 
lished in the October number of 1824. A friend sent 
it to Goethe, whose thanks in German for it may be 
rendered as follows: 

"Your Excellency has put me anew under obligation 
by the periodical sent me. It is in every case note- 
worthy to see how the effects of a long life work through 
the world, and also gain gradually here and there in 
influence, according to the times and circumstances. 
I had to smile when I was obliged to regard myself in so 
distant and besides so republican a mirror. 

" Moreover, this essay has a good effect upon everybody : 
so much intellect and insight, joined with a youthfully 
cheerful enjoyment in writing, excites a certain sympa- 
thetic, pleasant feeling. He was able to fill out pleasingly 
even the gaps where particular information, failed him 
and in general to round out the whole with euphemy."^ 

The "youthfully cheerful enjoyment in writing" 
which Goethe detected may be noticed in the other 
articles Bancroft was writing at this time. The episode 
of the Bank article has shown a healthy independence of 
spirit. This was sometimes carried to a point which 
made him a difficult contributor. How seriously he 
took his work as a product upon which no irreverent 

' See Briefwechsel ztvischen Goethe und Amerikanern, L. L. 
Mackall (Goethe-Jahrbuch, 1904). 



l822-is:u] PERIOD OF TEACHING 183 

hand must be laid, several passages in Bancroft's letters 
to Edward Everett reveal. In these he complains vio- 
lently of the liberties which Jared Sparks, as editor of 
the North American, had taken with his "copy."* The 
integrity of his own self-expression was as dear to him 
as it has been to many another beginner before and 
since. Yet the contributions did not cease, nor were 
his efforts confined to the North American Review. In 
Walsh's American Quarterly Review, for example, we 
find among other articles from Bancroft a paper on 
H. E. D wight's Travels in North Germany. This is 
particularly worth noting for its evidences of Bancroft's 
reversion to the European diaries which have provided 
so many of the earlier pages of the present volume. In 
a word, he was putting to good use all his acquisitions. 
Thus, for Bancroft, the period of teaching was also 
in large measure a period of learning — in the school of 
practical experience in writing. In this period also fell 
the more vital circumstance of his first marriage, to 
Miss Sarah H. Dwight, daughter of Jonathan Dwight of 

' On January 2, 1827, Sparks wrote to Bancroft: " I regret as 
much as you can, that the article [on Greek Lexicography] was 
printed, since you have such impressions of the business, though 
I have no sense of ' wrong ' in the case, and can only wonder again 
at your strange notions of an editor's task, and of these things in 
general. I believe there is no mortal whose views on this subject 
in any respect resemble yours, and if all writers were thus 
minded, an editor's condition would be very much like that of a 
toad under a harrow. No man, in fact, would stand to such a 
post long — but let that pass ..." 

On December 11, 1826, Sparks had already pointed out to 
Bancroft "two grand mistakes: first, to suffer yourself to be 
unduly excited about comparatively small things; and, secondly, 
to have little respect for the judgment of others." 



184 GEORGE BANCROFT [1822-1831 

Springfield. The marriage took place March 1, 1827, 
before Bancroft's connection with the Round Hill 
School was severed. Between 1831 and 1837, when 
Mrs. Bancroft died, four children — two daughters, of 
whom the elder died in infancy, and two sons — were 
born. The period of teaching and learning extended 
well into Bancroft's maturity, but its length was well 
proportioned to his total length of days and labour. 



IV 

POLITICS AND HISTORY 

1831—1845 

The chapters of a man's life can never begin and end 
so definitely as the chapters of the book describing it. 
Bancroft did not turn all at once from learning to teach- 
ing, from poetising to preaching, from books to affairs, 
from affairs to historiography. The busy early years 
of his life, already reviewed, had room, before the task 
of school-master was ended, for the beginnings of the 
two activities to which the remainder of his life was de- 
voted^politics, emerging later into statesmanship, and 
historical study and writing, unremittingly pursued for 
nearly sixty years. 

While he was still one of the masters of Round Hill, 
Bancroft delivered, in 1826, the Fourth of July oration 
at Northampton. This was his first public political 
utterance. It was not an occasion for partisan argu- 
ment, and was not utilised for that purpose. Yet it is 
a significant fact that on this very day when Thomas 
Jefferson and John Adams were dying, it was the 
Virginia not the New England statesman whom Ban- 
croft in his patriotic oratory described as one "whose 
principles are identified with the character of our 

185 



186 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

Government, and whose influence with the progress of 
civil liberty throughout the world." It was the Jeffer- 
sonian doctrine that he set forth when he declared, 
with reference to the Constitution, that "the sovereignty 
of the people is the basis of the system. With the 
people the power resides, both theoretically and 
practically. The government is a democracy, a de- 
termined, uncompromising democracy; administered 
immediately by the people, or by the people's responsi- 
ble agents." And again: "The popular voice is all 
powerful with us; this is our oracle; this, we acknowl- 
edge, is the voice of God." 

The words, uttered before any party considerations 
could have counted for much with Bancroft, are worth 
noting. There has always been speculation about the 
influences which made Bancroft a Democrat, and 
separated him, in Massachusetts, from most of his 
natural associates. The social and academic traditions 
of these associates held them safe within the Federalist- 
Whig succession. Those who stood outside of it, with 
the supporters first of Jefferson and then of Andrew 
Jackson, were regarded almost as the supporters of 
" Ben " Butler at a later day. The stronger convictions 
of the first half of the century expressed themselves per- 
haps even more definitely in lifted eyebrows and cold 
averted shoulders. There were indeed those who 
entertained the suspicion — still preserved orally — that 
so shrewd an observer as George Bancroft foresaw the 
triumphs of Democracy, and knew that the few dis- 
tinguished Democrats in Massachusetts must obtain 
distinguished political rewards. When Harriet Marti- 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 187 

neau visited America in 1834-1835, she saw something 
of Bancroft, and may very well have derived from him 
the impression preserved in these words in her Society 
in America:^ "A Massachusetts man has little chance 
of success in public life unless he starts a Federalist: and 
he has no chance of rising above a certain low point, un- 
less, when he reaches that point, he makes a transition 
into Democracy." 

In the light of all these considerations the words of 
1826, when Bancroft himself, teaching school in a New 
England village, was but twenty-six years old, are 
certainly significant; and in the absence of any evidence 
in the preserved correspondence that personal ad- 
vantage dictated his choice of a party, it is fair to assume 
that the Northampton oration represented Bancroft's 
native political bent, nurtured by travel and study, to- 
ward a theoretic belief in democracy pure and simple. 
His later political utterances expressed this belief again 
and again. Certainly it is the belief which coloured — 
often with too clear a partiality — many pages of his 
history. Whether the history was tinged by his political 
convictions, or his politics were determined by his 
historic bent, would be a fruitless discussion. There 
were the two phenomena side by side; and it must be 
said that Bancroft the politician and Bancroft the 
historian, were consistent exponents of the same demo- 
cratic principle. 

He knew well enough that his views would be un- 
popular in his own circle. Three days before delivering 
his Northampton oration he wrote to his fiancee, Miss 

1 Vol. II, p. 137. 



188 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

Dwight, in Springfield: "If your father should think 
of coming, you must tell him what a radical, democratic, 
levelling, unrighteous oration I have written." In a 
letter of September 17, 1826, to Miss Dwight, visiting 
in Boston, there is another passage pointing the direction 
of Bancroft's early political philosophy: "The other 
day I was wandering among the tombs, full of political 
speculations, and finding the honest grave-digger's 
assistant, one of the sovereigns of the country, you 
know, I began to hold forth to him on liberty and 
equality. 'Ah! yes,' replied he, rolling up the eyes of 
a drunkard, 'I often think, as I am turfing graves, that 
all men are about equal. It does not take much more 
turf for one than another, and I charge ninepence a 
grave.' We parted, I astonished at his philosophy and 
right perception of things, whether he thought me a wise 
man or not." 

But for Bancroft's marriage his outward identifica- 
tion with Democratic politics might have begun earlier. 
His wife's family, the Dwights of Springfield, were 
prominent Whigs; "and at her request," said Professor 
Sloane in an article^ which spoke with direct authority, 
"he never accepted office, although once elected, in 
1830, to a seat in the Legislature without his knowledge, 
and once, in 1831, requested to accept the nomination 
for Secretary of State." 

That he did not escape the consequences of his 
Democratic beliefs, we mav infer from letters to Mrs. 
Bancroft written during a trip to Boston in 1831, not 
long after the appearance of his article on the Bank. 

* Century Magazine, January, 1887. 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 189 

On May 5, Bancroft defends himself against calumnies 
which have disturbed his wife : " Indeed, my dear wife," 
he says, "the article on the U. S. Bank is the thing 
which in this quarter has brought upon me the imputa- 
tion of Jacksonism, and that article has occasioned more 
strictures here from the friends of the bank, and the 
unqualified friends of a political party. ... P. S. 
Your uncle Ned told at a dinner party that the article 
on the bank was written under your father's dictation, 
simply in defense of your father's interest, that he was a 
large stockholder in the west of New York, &c., &c. 
This Edmund said at his own table with Webster, Story 
and others at it. Judge ye." 

On the journey homeward Bancroft wrote again: 

To Mrs. S. D. Bancroft. 

"Worcester, Maij 10, 1831. 
"... I found by diligent inquiry at the sources, that 
my course, as it respects the U. S. Bank, was well ap- 
proved of. Alexander,* the diplomatist, sets forth his 
intention to print the continuance of it. I lectured Ned 
on his ignorance and folly about the matter; and gave 
him plainly to understand, he might read what I should 
write, to learn ; and not undertake to criticise. He says 
in Boston, that he told you all at Springfield, that my 
views were derived from your father's personal interests. 
I said plainly, that he had held no such language; and 
if he says he did, he . . . 

1 Alexander H. Everett, Editor of the North American Review. 
See p. 164. 



190 GEORGE BANCROFT [I83i-1845 

"I passed exactly a week in Boston and passed it 
very pleasantly. All my friends were as full as ever of 
the most cordial hospitality, and I had always more 
invitations that I could accept. They had heard several 
foolish and false stories; they esteemed them foolish and 
false; and neither Judge Jackson, nor Mr. Bowditch, 
nor any other respectable men, had conceived 'distrust'; 
nor were my feelings in the whole time once ruffled by 
any unwelcome suggestions. The book-seller told me, 
they wished to print everything I would write; the 
corporation, at least a leading member of it, expressed a 
strong wish that I would accept a place at Cambridge; 
and, indeed, many seemed to wish that we lived nearer 
Boston, that so the friendly intercourse might be direct 
and frequent. I met nothing but kind welcomes, and 
frank warm-heartedness, the industrious calumnies of 
's friends to the contrary notwithstanding. 

" I have made a good journey of it to Boston. I have 
gained self-confidence; and am determined, as the 
Scripture has it, to work out my own salvation. . . ." 

The working out of his salvation took him in this year 
of 1831 far afield. In the autumn he travelled as far 
west as Cleveland, and thence to Washington, where he 
spent several weeks, on business connected with the in- 
corporation of a Cleveland bank. In this business he 
was acting not only for himself, but for the Dwights, 
with whom, after the death of the first IVIrs. Bancroft, 
and the failure of the bank, there were unhappy disa- 
greements touching financial matters. During Ban- 
croft's absence from home in 1831 and 1832, his first 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 191 

child was born and died. In the letters which passed 
between him and his wife at this time, there are passages 
of more than merely personal concern: 

To Mrs. S. D. Bancroft. 

"Washington City, December 25, 1831. 

" Wliat shall I write to you about ? You charged me 
to write to you only of facts and sentiment; but this is 
the region of corrupting ambition and not of sentimental 
elegance; and as for the other branch of your topics, I 
can only say, the old maxim declares there is no such 
thing as a fact in the world ; whether this is universally 
true or no I will not undertake to determine, but here 
in Washington, you may run through every street in the 
city and every letter in their alphabet of cross-roads, and 
I defy you to catch a fact in any one of them. It is a 
received adage, that truth lies at the bottom of a well; 
but I do not believe it; if she were there, we could send 
down a bucket and draw her out; but on my conscience 
I believe a bucket of lies would come up, and Truth re- 
main as little seen as before. 

"But really that youngest Miss Maxcy is a very 
pretty as well as a very accomplished girl, talks French 
as well as our little one will at sixteen, and plays on the 
piano delightfully. I told her honestly, before I asked 
the indulgence of hearing her, that I really knew nothing 
of music, and could not discriminate one tune from 
another; and then she went with great mildness and 
good nature and played exquisitely for a half hour, 
when her sister took her place and sang a French song 



192 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1S45 

or two with great spirit and effect. Maxcy is himself 
a fine, gentlemanly fellow; his wife is not brilliant but 
amiable; and the aspect of the house is very genteel and 
domestic. But Mrs. Donaldson [sic\ is a far prettier 
woman than Mrs. Maxcy: indeed I was quite charmed 
with Mrs. D. Being determined to have a long and 
regular chat with the old man/ the roaring lion I mean, 
I went in the evening. I assure you the old gentleman 
received us as civilly as any private individual could 
have done: he had me introduced to all the ladies of the 
family, and such was the perfect ease and good breeding 
that prevailed there, they talked with me as though I had 
been an acquaintance of ten years' standing. I re- 
mained there a large part of the evening, and the 
General was kind enough to ask his niece to play and 
sing. She did both very sweetly and artlessly; nor 
was there either in the manner of Jackson or any of the 
ladies the least hauteur or affectation. I received a 
very favourable impression of the President's personal 
character; I give him credit for great firmness in his 
attachments, for sincere kindness of heart, for a great 
deal of philanthropy and genuine good feeling; but 
touching his qualifications for President, avast there — 
Sparta hath many a wiser son than he. . . . 

"My nearest neighbor is John Davis. ^ I occupy by 
night a room adjoining his; but by day we are the insep- 
arables almost, except that he rarely goes out unless to 
the house. We are like Damon and Pythias, each 
writing his letters at opposite ends of the same table and 

* President Jackson. 

» The husband of Bancroft's sister Eliza. 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 193 

sometimes seasoning our occupations with the salt of a 
little conversation; a commentary on the past; a fore- 
boding of the future; a cut at the judicious tariff; or 
a wise remark on the depravity of human nature. 

"Mrs. Wayne inquires after you as usual with inter- 
est: and all my friends take an opportunity of express- 
ing their interest in the little girl, who is, it appears, 
likely to vie with her mother in beauty under the mother's 
fostering care. If the poor thing shows already a will 
of her own, she at least comes honestly by it. 

"By the way, I forgot to mention, that General 
Jackson is a great stickler for virtue and truth; he de- 
clares that our institutions are based upon the virtue 
of the community, and added, that the moment 'dema- 
gogues obtain influence with the people our liberties 
will be destroyed.' I was excessively edified by so 
chaste and apposite a remark. He assured me that 
truth would in the eend (pronounce the word to rhyme 
with fiend) be every man's best policy. He talked very 
learnedly upon the present state of England, the 
Princess of Orange's jewels, and I drew him out on the 
Bank of the United States. 

"The Potomac still continues frozen, and poor Mrs. 
Johnston with her eleven trunks and eight bandboxes, 
has not clothes enough to go abroad. She has credit 
here for an unprecedented fondness for dress; her 
ornaments are more various and prettier and more 
expensive than those of any lady in the city. She never 
appears in company twice in the same dress, but de- 
lights in vicissitudes and changes and elaborate display. 
Mrs. Wayne, on the contrary, has become quite a 



194 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

theologian, and argues on the fall of Adam, the serpent 
and the apple with all the ardour of a neophite and all 
the sincerity of a devotee. 

"The American people, as a whole, are a stern race. 
Gaiety of heart is almost unknown. Care, like the old 
man on Sinbad's shoulders, jumps upon every one's 
back; and I declare to you, I cannot recall the time, 
when I have witnessed any light-hearted, innocent 
drollery, or the outpourings of merry good nature. 
Everybody is intensely occupied in the pursuit of some- 
thing; and in their progress through life these impetuous 
aspirants do not even seek out resting-places. 

"A merry Christmas to you, one and all. I am to eat 
my Christmas Dinner at five o'clock with his ex- 
majesty King Charles the Tenth. Ah! I would rather 
be by your side, than listen to the experiences of abro- 
gated royalty. I have written many letters, but receive 
few. 

To Mrs. S. D. Bancroft. 

"City of Washington, December 27, 1831. 
". . . I wrote to you on Christmas day. At five I 
went to John Q. Adams', and there we had a very agree- 
able entertainment. Mr. and Mrs. A. pleased me a 
great deal more in their present condition, than of yore 
in the palace. Mr. A. talked a great deal and exceed- 
ingly well; the dinner was excellent, except that the 
venison, a superb saddle, was not hot. I got so much 
engaged in conversation, that I staid till after nine. 
Among other curious things, Mr. A. told me, that in 
the year 1823 on the death of Judge Livingston, he had 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 195 

named to Mr, Monroe J^an Bureii as a candidate for a 
place on the bench of the Supreme court. The hero 
of Kinderhook promised that, should he receive the 
appointment, he could convoke his enemies and his 
friends at Albany, give them an elegant dinner, treat 
them to an abundance of Champaign, and then, in a 
valedictory speech, would bid farewell forever to politics 
and pledge himself to know no parties upon the bench. 
Mr. Adams thinks, that had Van Buren at that time 
been appointed Judge, he would have followed in the 
track of INIarshall, and proved himself a sound inter- 
preter of national principles. That may have issued 
so; but I drew another inference. Van Buren was at 
that time the leader of the Crawford party in New York, 
and by nullifying its leader Adams hoped to have 
secured that state to his own support without division. 
During dinner the topics discussed were, the French 
revolution, the condition of England, the political 
characters of Whitbread, Pitt, Fox, Lord Grey and 
others, besides some topics more of learning than ex- 
perience, and quite a discussion of the influence of the 
press. Mr. Adams compared the press to guns, armour, 
the implements of war; I replied, that those were es-. 
sentially the means of destruction; that I would com- 
pare the press rather to the Cereal grains, which are 
ordinarily the nutriment of life, but which are some- 
times perverted by distillation into poisonous liquors. 
'I cannot admit your comparison,' cried Mr. A., and 
others at table joined against me; but my view is, none 
the less, the more humane and true. 

"Yesterday the President's house was open at noon 



196 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

for all true Musselmen. Davis and I went, and found 
the General, the East Room, Mrs. Donaldson and all 
that was to have been expected. The old man stood 
in the centre of a little circle, about large enough for a 
cotillion, and shook hands with anybody that offered. 
The number of ladies who attended was small; nor 
were they brilliant. But to compensate for it, there was 
a throng of apprentices, boys of all ages, men not 
civilised enough to walk about the rooms with their 
hats off; the vilest promiscuous medley, that ever was 
congregated in a decent house; many of the lowest, 
gathering round the doors, pouncing with avidity upon 
the wine and refreshments, tearing the cake with the 
ravenous keenness of intense hunger; starvelings, and 
fellows with dirty faces and dirty manners; all the 
refuse that Washington could turn forth from its work- 
shops and stables. In one part of the room it became 
necessary to use the rattan; and a respectable woman 
would have far preferred to walk in the streets to 
the chance of being jostled in that assembly. 

"I dined at Mr. Seaton's. His wife is a lady of 
[word missing] understanding, and the party was just 
large enough to be so [word cut from letter] agreeable. 
Mr. S. is, as you may perhaps know, one of the Edito[rs 
of the?] National Intelligencer, largely acquainted 
with public men and measures, and of very respectable 
character and talents. I remained there till evening, 
when I repaired to Calhoun's to hear a new dissertation 
on negative powers. 

"But to-day I am quite in despair. My busmess is 
delayed by the want of a report from the Secretary of 



1831-1845] POL/r/CS AND HISTORY 197 

the Treasury, and today I am informed, he is sick in 
bed with the influenza. I can with difficulty practice 
the patience that is necessary. To form any idea of 
the time, when I may bring my business here to an 
issue, is in vain. I almost abandon the pursuit; yet 
$8000 are worth a little patience and a sturdy effort. 
Talk of reform! The departments are full of the 
laziest clerks, and men are paid large salaries for neglect- 
ing the public business. But as I am in their hands I 
am forced to be civil; otherwise I could read them a 
vituperative lecture." 

To Mrs. S. D. Bancroft. 

"Washington, January 11, 1832. 
"The city has to-day been edified by an interesting 
speech from Mr. Clay in the Senate. He had on Mon- 
day introduced a resolution, which covers the whole 
ground of the protective system. It was understood 
that he would call it up for consideration to-day at one 
o'clock. Accordingly at twelve Mrs. Johnston took 
me in her carriage and I was her beau into the Senate 
chamber. Though we came thus early, the usual seats 
were all occupied by ladies. So we were compelled to 
go upon the floor of the Senate and occupy chairs in 
front of the Vice President between him and the 
Senators. Never did I see a greater concourse: the 
Galleries were full, and all the beauty and fashion of the 
city were present. Mr. Clay was evidendy moved by 
the enormous concourse, which the fame of his eloquence 
had assembled; he began with expressions of great 



198 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

modesty, and then proceeded in a speech highly argu- 
mentative and in no respect declamatory, to make an 
exposition of his views. His speech contained no 
pathetic appeals, no special graces; but was clear 
forcible and convincing. I cannot say that intense 
interest was kept up. As it is the opening of the debate, 
peculiar vehemence would have been in bad taste; 
parliamentary decorum seems to require an attack, as a 
preliminary to 'earnestness of excitement. The older 
members of Congress declare that Mr. Clay's speech in 
point of argument ranks among his best: in point of 
declamation it was inferior to many. If I must speak 
the truth I should own myself a little disappointed. 
His manner was not so graceful, as I had supposed; 
nor was his language distinguished by richness or 
variety. He spoke for an hour and three quarters. 

"Yet Clay's superiority was eminent when Hayne rose 
to reply. He made a few remarks, purely declamatory, 
and then moved deferring the subject till Monday 
next. In other words, he wishes to take time to prepare 
a speech and invites the ladies to come and honour him 
with their presence the first day of next week. 

"I think the Tariff policy will be sustained, while the 
Bank will not get its charter renewed this winter. . . ." 

To Mrs. S. D. Bancroft. 

"Washington, January 17, 1832. 
"... The Colonization Society had a famous meet- 
ing last night in the Hall of the Representatives. The 
appearance of that splendid room, when brilliantly 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 199 

lio-hted up, is exceedingly fine. Resolutions were 
offered from various quarters, and several addresses 
were made. My feelings were on the whole enlisted 
in favour of the colony at Liberia, which is perhaps 
destined ultimately to carry the light and benefits of 
civilisation to the uttermost parts of the African conti- 
nent. I heard with horror, that the slave trade is still 
continued under as aggravating circumstances as ever; 
and that the infernal cupidity of the slave dealers still 
carries one hundred thousand negroes annually into 
foreign bondage. Mr. Everett spoke with great 
eloquence and at considerable length. Some of his 
imao-es were exceedinglv beautiful; and his manner 
ready, dignified, and graceful. His language also was 
rich and glowing, and had nothing of the homely barren- 
ness, by which most of the speakers in Congress are 
distinguished. Indeed I think public speaking at this 
place is extremely jejune and diffuse. Strong practical 
sense and firmness of character prevail far more than the 
arts of oratory, with the more honest part of the public 
officers; while the talent at intrigue and the art of 
forming combinations best serve the purposes of political 

aspirants. 

" Mr. Archer of Virginia spoke also last evening and 
at considerable length. From the tenour of his remarks, 
it is plain, that the state which he represents, is at least 
deeply sensible of the evils of slavery, and fearfully looks 
forward to an impending crisis. He described the con- 
dition of free blacks in the slave-holding states to be 
wretched in the extreme; cut off from all opportunity of 
successful exertion, and necessarily rendered vicious. 



200 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

because they are necessarily idle. But for my part, I 
shall not take, so far as the South is concerned, I shall 
not take a deep interest in their participation in forward- 
ing colonisation in Africa, unless they also take some 
steps, initiatory at least, to final emancipation. And of 
this there exists little hope, until the evil becomes far 
more intense than it now is. For slavery corrupts the 
masters. My strongest objection to it is not derived 
from the degradation and injuries of the blacks: no; 
it further demoralises the whites, cuts the sinews of 
industry, dries up the sources of intelligent enterprise 
and inventive competition, and while it renders the 
slave an inefficient eye servant, it forms the master to 
habits of indolent apathy. The slave-owner is essen- 
tially a man of expedients; he accustoms himself to 
discomforts; he contents himself with miserable patch- 
work; he punishes himself constantly for subjecting 
his fellow-men to bondage by a proportionate deprecia- 
tion in [najtive skill, prompt industry, orderly neatness, 
and regular economy. I could not easily be tempted 
to live in a slave country. . . ." 

To Mrs. S. D. Bancroft. 

"Washington, D. C, January 18, 1832. 
"... A thick, heavy book has been my table: it is 
the History of the American colonies by Chalmers; a 
work, written in a tory spirit, full of spleen against our 
ancestors but marked by profound investigation and 
great legal acuteness. The volume is in part polemic in 
its character; having the object to prove the right of 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 201 

Great Britain to tax her colonies; today I have selected, 
to while away a few solitary hours, a work more varied 
in its character. It is the treatise of Sir Humphrey 
Davy on the Passions; and belongs to a class of works, 
which I have ever loved to read. But during my 
absence I have rather had occasion to study man in life 
and conduct; my former years were you know passed 
rather among books and boys than in action. It has 
been a benefit to me to have mingled actively among 
men; I understand them better than before; I have also 
acquired self-confidence; finding myself abundantly 
able to mix with the active on even terms. Or rather, 
I may say, that all my exertions have thus far prospered, 
and, so far as it is well to have laboured successfully, so 
far you may have satisfaction in my winter's work. 

"It seems to me at times, as if the recollection of 
former years were returning to my mind more vividly 
than heretofore. The tastes, which have lain dormant, 
have revived; and my mind has been aroused to greater 
activity. It was an unwise thing in me to have made 
myself a school-master: that was a kind of occupation, 
to which I was not peculiarly adapted, and in which 
many of inferior abilities and attainments could have 
succeeded as well. I have felt rejoiced at being en- 
tirely emancipated from this condition: I am too fond 
of personal independence to be willing, that my time 
should be for each day so exactly measured out: be- 
sides it was impossible for me to journey in any direc- 
tion in the pleasant season with you: but now, dearest 
love, I shall be able to show you the heights of the 
Catskill; and perhaps take you to the falls of Trenton: 



202 GEORGE BANCROFT [I83i-i845 

at any rate, we will so combine our arrangements, that 
you shall have more to amuse and please you than the 
first four years of our marriage afforded. . . ." 

To Mrs. S. D. Bancroft. 

"City of Washington, D. C, January 23, 1832. 

"... Last night I passed an hour or two in a manner 
as gratifying to me as any could have been among 
strangers. We went to call upon Judge Story, and we 
found there Judge Baldwin and Chief Justice Marshall. 
I drew my chair close up to the latter, nor can you 
readily conceive of the great suavity or rather calmness 
of manner by which he is distinguished. In conversa- 
tion he makes no display nor is he remarkable except 
for this venerable coolness of manner. There are 
about him no marks of genius ; but in his entire collected- 
ness, great precision, and calm uniformity, you may 
discern the signs of an unerring judgment. He is by 
all acknowledged to stand foremost on the bench of 
the Supreme court, a first-rate man in the first class of 
greatness. He has travelled very little; has not been 
in New England since the war; has hardly seen New 
York, but has lived in the regular exercise of his judicial 
functions, unincumbered by other care than that of 
giving character and respectability to the bench over 
which he presides. Judge Baldwin thinks more of the 
Tariff, than he does of law; but he is an agreeable man, 
full of vivacity, and a thorough advocate of the protective 
system. 

"We called on the Judge at [an] early hour in the 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 203 

evening; but I was so taken with the respected circle, 
that I ''remained wiUingly within the influences of their 
wisdom, till after nine. ^ 

"Today the Tariff question has been tried in the 
house; a very strong and decided vote was given in 
favour of the protective policy. 

"You may tell your father, the Tariff system is 
perfectly safe for the period of the present Congress." 

The Washington letters bear all the marks of a keen 
interest in public affairs and men. It was to an incon- 
spicuous routine and to a wife pitifully saddened by the 
loss of her first child that Bancroft returned early in 
1832. They were still living in Northampton, and 
much of Bancroft's time was free for magazine writing 
and whatever else he might elect. The financial re- 
turns from the magazine work could not have been the 
sole provocations to his industry in this direction. In 
1831, a Boston editor, Joseph T. Buckingham, planmng 
a new periodical, wrote to Bancroft: " Several gentle- 
men have agreed to furnish original matter at the rate 
of one dollar a printed page, that being the price paid 
for contributions by the proprietors of the iV. A 
Review " In 1832 Bancroft received from Cincinnati 
the prospectus of the Western Quarterly Review, v^^th 
this extravagant promise from the publishers: tor 
each accepted article they will pay Three Dollars 
Per PAGE-a rate of compensation for literary labour, 
unusual, they believe, on this side the Atlantic. 
Bancroft's vision at this time, however, must have been 
fixed upon the future more than the present-and he was 



204 GEORGE BANCROFT [I83i-1845 

fortunate in the independence which the circumstances 
of his wife and the success of Round Hill school up to 
the time of his leaving it had brought to him. 

Unhappily the records of Bancroft's career reveal no 
such moment as that in which Prescott, after casting 
about for a great undertaking, wrote in his diary: "I 
subscribe to the 'History of Ferdinand and Isabella.'" 
Conscious as Bancroft was that "many of inferior 
abilities and attainments could have succeeded as well 
as he did " in the profession of teaching, he does not seem 
to have shared with others his views of what he could do. 
There are no direct memorials of the process of mind 
which brought him to beginning the work of his life- 
time. That the subject of American history was engag- 
ing his interest and study, his closest friends and corre- 
spondents must have known. His letters of the early 
'thirties' abound in evidences that he was seeking in- 
formation in every available quarter. As President Kirk- 
land in 1825 thought it worth while to consult Bancroft 
about the use of the subjunctive in bestowing an honor- 
ary degree upon President Dwight of Yale, so Bancroft 
turned for help to those who could render it. James 
Savage and others answered queries upon points within 
their knowledge. Judge Story, in a letter of May 15, 
1834, warmly commended the portion of the book which 
he had read, at Bancroft's request, in proof. Wherever 
one may turn in the letters written and received by 
Bancroft at this time there are traces of industry, 
industry — prodigious and indefatigable. When the 
fruits of it all came to light in the first volume of his 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 205 

History of the United States, in 1834, the uses to which 
he was putting his independence were clear to see. It 
was equally clear that he had undertaken no small 
task, for the first words of the Preface are: "I have 
formed the design of writing a History of the United 
States from the Discovery of the American Continent 
to the present." Farther on he says: "The work has 
already occasioned long preparation, and its completion 
will require further years of exertion." That these 
years would number nearly three score, and that the 
History would end where the" actual life of the United 
States begins, neither writer nor reader could have 

imagined. 

It is not a part of the plan of this biography to pause 
at the appearance of each volume of Bancroft's History 
for a critical consideration of its contents. The work 
of so voluminous an historian can be viewed perhaps 
more profitably at a later point and as a whole. 
Here it will suffice to give some impressions of the 
effect which Bancroft's first volume produced upon 
certain of his contemporaries. Nothing could have 
given him more pleasure than the following words 
from Edward Everett: 

From Edward Everett to George Bancroft. 

"Charlestown, Massachusetts, October 5, 1834. 

"I have this moment finished reading your History. 
I cannot say I have studied the volume, because it 
is just twenty-four hours since I took it up, and in 
this interval I have had a night's sleep and a day's 



206 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

attendance at church. But I have read every word 
in your book, and on a few points compared such 
authorities, as I have on my shelves. I mention the 
rapidity with which I have gone through it, as the 
best manner of letting you know, how much it has in- 
terested me. 

"I can say, with great sincerity, that I think you have 
done most admirably; I am afraid to tell you how much 
I like it; not for fear you will suspect my honesty; but 
for fear that, in thus writing to you, under the excitement 
of the recent perusal of the book, and with my mind 
labouring with all the noble ideas and warm feelings it 
has awakened, I may say more, than, at a cooler mo- 
ment, I can stand to. Of that I must take my chance; 
and for the present, I must tell you, that I think you 
have written a Work which will last while the memory 
of America lasts; and which will instantly take its 
place among the classics of our language. It is full of 
learning, information, common sense, and philosophy; 
full of taste and eloquence; full of life and power. 
You give us not wretched pasteboard men; not a sort 
of chronological table, with the dates written out at 
length, after the manner of most historians: — but you 
give us real, individual, living men and women, with 
their passions, interests, and peculiarities. I have 
read too hastily to institute comparisons, but the 
sketch of Williams, and the topic of Puritanism seem to 
me most happily, — I know not whether to say, — thrown 
off or studied out (for like every thing super-excellent, 
there is in them a mixture of inspiration and thought) : 
and Soto's expedition, the mode of life in Virginia, King 



X 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 207 

James's character, Hooker's emigration, the origin of 
the Covenant in Scotland are also essays more or less 
detailed of exceeding beauty and strength. I do assure 
you, I never read a volume with greater pleasure, few 
with equal satisfaction; and I could not rest till I had 
told you so. 

"I could almost envy you to have found so noble a 
theme, while yet so young. You can bestow on it all 
the time it needs. Carry it on, and complete it before 
you reach the meridian." 

In the January, 1835, number of the North American 
Review appeared Everett's review of Bancroft's first 
volume. Though the file of family letters shows that 
it did not wholly satisfy his nearest of kin, the following 
letter indicates what it meant to Bancroft himself: 

To Edward Everett. 

"Northampton, Januarij 8, 1835. 

" I have this afternoon read your notice of my History. 
If I had not steeled my heart against all weakness, I 
should have shed tears of delight as I read it; and that 
not from the gratification merely of my hopes as an 
author, but also from a sense of pride and gratitude, 
that such praise could be bestowed upon me by one 
whose candour I have ever admired and whose genius 
I have venerated. The article is beautifully written; 
it says everything and more than everything that my 
nearest friends could desire. 

"From my earliest years, you have been a sort of 



208 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

good genius to me. In boyhood my love of letters was 
kindled and heightened by my admiration of your ex- 
ample; and though the choice of the narrow path of 
intelligence has sometimes led me among thorns, I have 
never, for a moment, regretted ray election. It was 
your advice to our excellent Kirkland, which carried 
me to Germany; it was your letters which made me 
friends there, taught me how to keep in the ruts, and 
how to profit by my opportunities. I saw, then, at 
Gottingen, the impossibility of reconciling the acquisi- 
tions of a German University with the notions of 
Boston; I remember well writing you so; I remember 
well, advising with you on devoting myself to the 
pursuit of history, and for sixteen years my main pur- 
pose in life has been unchanged. 

"The public press seems unwilling to leave me at 
rest. Petty scribblers are still busy, although I have 
held my peace. I regard their folly with perhaps too 
much indifference; at any rate it cannot disturb the 
tranquillity with which I ever cherish for you the 
strong sentiments of grateful friendship; or the satis- 
faction I derive from your praise. . . ." 

The commendation of Bancroft's Gottingen instruc- 
tor, Heeren, must have been no less welcome than that 
of his American adviser. Heeren's letter, translated 
as follows, has the special interest of emphasising 
the German standards of thoroughness in going to 
original sources and letting the reader follow every- 
where. It therefore suggests an important influence 
in Bancroft's training. 



1831-1845J POLITICS AND HISTORY 209 

From A. H. L. Heeren to George Bancroft: 

"GoTTiNGEN, September 1, 1835. 

"My honoured Friend. — You have refreshed my re- 
membrance of you in the most excellent way. First I 
received the letter announcing your work, and only a 
few days later, there came, what I dared not hope, the 
book itself. Never have I been so agreeably surprised. 
You have chosen a great subject; it is a life work, for it 
will occupy you a great part of it, and altogether it is 
the most agreeable, the most grateful, and the worthiest 
labour you could enter upon. 

" I am still busy reading your book, and the further I 
read the more it rivets my attention. You have 
laboured with masterly care and constant effort. I am 
amazed at the mass of sources you have used, and I 
rejoice that the library in New Cambridge, being open 
to you, has met all your requirements. The care with 
which in each case you have given the authorities 
enables the reader throughout to investigate for himself. 
This exceedingly scrupulous care, which, moreover, you 
cannot hope for in English and French writers, is your 
great merit, — all the more since you, so far as possible, 
consulted contemporary writings. In this way, there- 
fore, while you have performed the duties of the 
historian with respect to facts, you have not failed in 
those of the historiographer. The treatment is entirely 
worthy of the subject. Your work is no mere compila- 
tion; it is written with the warmth and enthusiasm the 
writer feels in his subject, so natural in writing the 
history f f one's own country. This is the true inspira- 



210 GEORGE BANCROFT [I83i-1845 

tion of the historian, so very different from that of the 
poet. 

"I entirely approve your having made this first part 
so thoroughly complete. Your theme is to show how 
America has become what it is; and to that end, this 
detailed exposition of the sources, by showing the re- 
search necessary to produce them, gives this first volume 
the best guarantee of your industry and exact scholarship. 

"Continue, therefore, my worthy friend, on the road 
you have set out upon. It will lead you to an honourable 
goal. May Heaven only give you health and strength 
to reach it. That is all that you need. 

"You have more than once remembered me in 
your foot-notes. It is one of the pleasantest thoughts 
for me, — and I hope no presumption, — that I have 
helped somewhat in the training of the historian of 
the United States. What higher reward could a teacher 
wish? . . ." 

Within Bancroft's immediate circle there was one, his 
brother-in-law, "Honest John" Davis, Governor and 
Senator from Massachusetts, who did not hesitate to 
warn the historian of the dangers before him. The 
following passage from a letter sounded so true a note 
that it should not be lost: 

From John Davis to George Bancroft. 

"Worcester, April 2, 1835. 
"... I rejoice most sincerely in the reception your 
volume has met with. I would rather rest m\ reputa- 






1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 211 

tion upon it with posterity than upon all the art of 
Jackson and Van together, but let me entreat you not 
to let the partisan creep into the work. Do not imbue 
it with any present feeling or sentiment of the moment 
which may give impulse to your mind. Remember 
that your favourite Roger lived to repent of his false 
opinions, and so do all frank sagacious minds. If you 
will give me leave I will say that you have put down 
your doctrine of suffrage as broad as it will bear. The 
right of suffrage and its qualifications involves consider- 
ations of a very grave character, not only grave but 
momentous. How would such an extended right as 
ours work in Ireland, England or France ? In many of 
the states they hold to the freehold qualification and it 
remains to be determined who is wisest. But I do not 
mean to go into an examination of the question. The 
historian is the recorder of truth and not of his own 
abstract opinions. The sagacious historian sees and 
delineates the effects that spring from causes, and 
beyond this he can scarcely tread with safety, for he 
then becomes a mere reasoner instead of a recorder, 
and his opinions will stand or fall like those of other 
men, but his record if true will abide. 

"You have great reason to be satisfied with your 
success, and fidelity coupled with perseverance will I 
trust complete a work that will maintain its place beside 
the best histories that stand upon our shelves. . . . " 

Davis, at the time of writing this letter, was fresh in 
the Governorship to which the Whig triumph of the 
previous November had elected him. The neighbour- 



212 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

ing Democratic governor, Marcy of New York, coiner 
of the long-current phrase uniting the victor and the 
spoils, naturally saw Bancroft's first volume with differ- 
ent eyes. On September 24, 1835, he wrote from 
Albany : " We all feel a deep Interest In your historical 
labours. It Is exceedingly Important that the history 
of our country be written by a man thoroughly Imbued 
with the democratic principles of our government, and 
it is not to be disguised that almost all our scholars 
competent to such an enterprise have a penchant 
towards the aristocracy." 

The Impression that Bancroft, during the lifetime of his 
first wife, refrained, out of deference to her feelings, from 
official participation in Democratic politics,^ must be 
modified by the records of the year 1834. The Boston 
Semi-Weekly Courier, for November 17, 1834, con- 
tains the following self-explanatory paragraph: 

"Mr. George Bancroft was a candidate for representa- 
tive to the General Court from Northampton, and 
received 167 votes. The lowest number of votes given 
to a Whig candidate was 312. We rejoice that Mr. 
Bancroft was defeated, though we are sorry that he is 
obllcred to suffer the mortification that follows it. We 
hope that he has learned a useful and salutary lesson; 
and that he will return from the wilderness of politics 
into which he plunged so inconsiderately, to the more 
attractive garden of literature-a field which he can 
cultivate, enrich and adorn-lmpartlng profit and 
pleasure to his country, and reaping honour to himself. 
We advise hlm-no-advlce he would think imperti- 
' See p. 188. 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 213 

nent, — we hope, and entreat, in the spirit of friendship, 
that he will write no more letters to the Workingmen, nor 
to any political cabal ; at least not till he shall have com- 
pleted his History of the United States. That, if finished 
as begun, will be a testimonial of his talent and fame, 
more enduring and more grateful to his descendants, 
than all the honours he can ever acquire as a politician." 
The animus of partisanship betrays itself here, though 
by no means so frankly as in the following two-sided 
paragraph from the Boston Post of November 7, 1834, 
three days before the election : 

"Workingmen of Boston! — Hear what the self-styled 
* Good society ' say of you — will you sustain those who 
are continually libelling your character, and heaping 
upon you the vilest abuse ? 

"From the Boston Atlas: 

"'The "Workingmen," as they style themselves, 
better known, however in that city, as the "idle men," 
who adjourn from the halls of infidelity and atheism; 
from the dram shops and the dram cellars, to their 
various places of meeting, to devise some scheme by 
which they may live on the earnings of the industrious 
men — are loud in the praise of thir new leader and co- 
worker, Mr. Bancroft.'" 

The failure of Bancroft's candidacy and the im- 
mediate hostilities to which it gave rise are of less conse- 
quence in a general viev/ of his life than the statement 
of political beliefs which he made to an inquiring com- 
mittee of Northampton citizens. Here he expressed 



214 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

his opposition to the United States Bank, his sympathy 

with the labouring man of every variety , his wish to place 

the sceptre in the hands of the people, his belief in free 

labour and the restriction of slavery, his feeling that the 

cause of Democracy and of practical Christianity were 

identical, and many other sentiments characteristic 

both of his party and of himself. When the election was 

over he wrote to Edward Everett (November 17, 1834): 

" It will be some years before a popular party can become 

powerful in this state. But it will rise, and within six 

years it will culminate. Webster will run for Presidency, 

and will get at most 24 votes. Van Buren will come in; 

and Massachusetts will come over to his support." 

This did not happen; but within two years Van Buren 

was elected to the presidency, and the fourteen electoral 

votes of Massachusetts were the only ones cast for 

Webster. 

Bancroft's defeat at the local polls by no means 

chilled his political ardour. The correspondence from 

this time forth reveals him as an important factor in 

Democratic party councils. His political views upon 

matters great and small were sought by such men as 

IMarcus Morton in Massachusetts, Levi Woodbury in 

New Hampshire and W. L. INIarcy in New York. 

Indeed it is easy to see how valuable Bancroft's party 

services must have been in formulating the party 

beliefs.^ For public or private service his practised pen 

' "This [the Democratic party of Massachusetts] was hardly 
more than a coterie of a few people of whom it was said truly 
enough that they kept the party conveniently small so that there 
might be enough Federal offices to go arounil. It was very 
convenient for them to have a scholar and enthusiast — a real 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 215 

was always ready. He was not too busy to provide the 
democratic citizens of Fayetteville, Vermont, who in- 
vited him in 1835 to take part in their Independence 
Day celebration, with an historic justification of 
Democracy in New England. By way of postscript he 
added : " Allow me to offer you the following sentiment. 
'Democracy. Its object is the happiness of the people; 
its strength is the intelligence of the people; may its 
permanent triumph aid the work of reform throughout 
the world.'" He produced the address to the Demo- 
cratic electors before the state election of 1835. As the 
fame of his book increased, lyceums, institutes, col- 
leges and organizations of many kinds appealed to him 
for political and literary lectures. On July 4, 1836, he 
delivered an oration before the Democracy of Spring- 
field and neighbouring towns. A passage from this 
oration well illustrates his habit of both political think- 
ing and writing: 

"... To the tory, law is an expression of absolute 
will; to the whig, it is the protection of privilege; to 
democracy, it is a declaration of right. In the tory 
system, the executive and sovereign are one; in the 
whig system, the executive is the sovereign, except 
where expressly limited; in the system of democracy, 
the executive is not the sovereign, but the servant, of the 

Democrat who could "say the things' for them. Of course the 
old Federalists were disgusted with this, and poor Bancroft had 
to share their disapprobations. But he made the Fourth-of-July 
orations cheerfully, and so in course.of time was made collector of 
customs and . . . secretary of the navy." — From letter of Rev. 
Dr. Edward Everett Hale to the author, Jan. 20, 1906. 



216 GEORGE BANCROFT [I83i-1845 

people. The tory clings to past abuses; the whig 
idolizes present possessions; democracy is the party 
of progress and reform. The tory, blaspheming God, 
pleads the will of heaven as a sanction for a government 
of force; the whig, forgetting that God is not the God 
of the dead, appeals to prescription; democracy lives 
in the consciences of the living. The tory demands an 
exclusive established church; the whig tolerates dissent 
on conditions; democracy enfranchises the human 
mind. The tory idolizes power; the whig worships his 
interests; democracy struggles for equal rights. The 
tory pleads for absolute monarchy; the whig for a 
wealthy aristocracy; democracy for the power of the 
people. The tory regards liberty as a boon; the whig 
as a fortunate privilege; democracy claims freedom as 
an inalienable right. The tory loves to see a slave at 
the plough; the whig prefers a tenant or a mortgaged 
farm; democracy puts the plough in the hands of the 
owner. The tory tolerates no elective franchise; the 
whig gives a vote to none but men of property; democ- 
racy respects humanity, and struggles for universal 
education and universal suffrage. The tory bids the 
suffering poor gather the crumbs that fall from his 
table; the whig says, 'Be ye clothed, be ye fed,' but 
allows no obligation; democracy holds it a duty 
to soothe the mourner, and to redeem the wretched. 
The tory looks out for himself; the whig for his clan; 
demoracy takes thought for the many. The tory ad- 
heres to the party of Moloch; the whig still worships 
at the shrine of Mammon; democracy is practical 
Christianity." 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 217 

A note at the end of the Springfield oration records a 
visit which Bancroft paid to Madison at MontpeHerfor 
a few days in March and April of 1836. He maintains 
"that Mr. Madison was in the last days of his life with 
the democracy of the country, as much as he was from 
1795 to the close of the war. . . . Mr. Madison was 
alike opposed to the Whigs of the South and to the 
Whigs of the North ; not to them personally, but to their 
doctrines; and his preference for Mr. Van Buren, 
whom he personally esteemed most highly, was the 
result, not of that personal esteem, but of love to the 
Union. The party that rallies round Mr. Van Buren 
was to Mr. Madison The Party of Union. " In this 
note also Bancroft has a word to say about his enemies, 
the Boston Whigs : "The attitude of the city of Boston 
has kept Massachusetts in an unrelenting opposition 
to every democratic administration of the country. 
It was said of the English nobility with regard to a man 
of genius, 'They helped to bury, whom they helped 
to starve.' It is a fact, which the yeomanry of Massa- 
chusetts ought duly to consider, that the whigs of that 
same city of Boston have been the loudest in their 
eulogies of the democratic presidents, after they were 
dead. ... It is a miserable policy to reserve affection 



for the grave 



j> 



This Springfield oration attracted wide attention, and 
brought forth many favourable expressions from those 
who shared the views of Bancroft. That he had won 
his way to more than local consideration, the following 
extract from a letter from Governor Marcy, dated 
Albany, September 20, 1836, clearly indicates: "On 



218 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

my return from the west I stayed one day at the Springs. 
In the evening I called on Mr. V. Buren and found him 
reading parts of your oration to some Southern gentle- 
men accompanied with such remarks as would have 
flattered you if you are a man capable of being flattered." 
One of his mother's refreshing, unstudied letters (Feb- 
ruary 12, 1836) gives another report of Van Buren's 
good opinion: "I am told by Mr. Randal who has 
recently visited W[ashington] that Van Burin pro- 
nounces you the first in Litterary improvements, and 
Eliza^ the most intelectual Lady in Washington. I 
laughed to your father, and said I always thot my 
children were wonders. Eliza tells us Van Burin says 
you are the first in Mass." 

A further evidence of Marcy's opinion of Bancroft's 
abilities, and at the same time of his willingness to 
employ them, crops out in a letter from Marcy (Octo- 
ber 31, 1837), about a Thanksgiving proclamation 
which Bancroft wrote for him. " I did not decline to 
adopt yours in toto," said Marcy, " because I imagined 
for a moment that I could make a better one; but it 
was so unlike anything which our community have 
been used to that I at first hesitated and then decided 
against adopting it." The circumstance is mentioned 
here partly for its foreshowing of a similar yet more 
important transaction with Andrew Johnson, of which 
due notice will be taken. 

Bancroft's sister Lucretia, a sprightly correspondent, 
who in 1834 reported a man's asking whether her brother 
was not crazy since he told the truth in history, wrote 

' Bancroft's sister, Mrs. John Davis. 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 219 

from the South hi 1836 in a vehi of "home truth" with 
which his divergences from the views of his kindred 
must have made him tolerably familiar: 

From Miss Lucretia Bancroft to George Bancroft. 

"Clinton, La., December 21, 1836. 

"... You are now fairly plunged into the waters of 
political strife, for having once been rejected by the 
people, you will not give up till you have made them 
acknowledge their error. But entre nous, don't you 
wish you had stuck to your trade of making books and 
been content with the lasting glory thus gained ? Would 
not your chance for immortality have been greater as 
the author of the History of the United States than as a 
speech-maker in Congress ? 

"I have seen some of the pretty speeches made on 
you in the course of the last contest and think you must 
be cased in armor of proof, if they have found no part 
thro' which to reach you. What say you to the charge 
of writing the Resolution wherein you are offered to 
the public as a fit Representative of its interests, or 
of addressing a letter to yourself, in the name of 

H ? There is but one thing which prevents me 

from siding with you in politics, and that is the 
companions you are compelled to be mixed with. 
Now, George, where will you find a man, more de- 
spised by the respectable part of the community than 
this same H ? . . . " 

To offset what was disagreeable in Bancroft's public 



220 GEORGE BANCROFT [1S31-1845 

relations at this time, there must have been much that 
was satisfying in his domestic hfe. The writing of the 
second volume of his history filled much of his time. 
To Everett, at the end of 1834, he wrote: "My em- 
ployment, morning and evening, is in preparing the 
second volume. The topics are various, grand in their 
character and capable of being arranged in an interesting 
narrative." Early in 1835 he wrote to the same corre- 
spondent: "I jog on in my second volume, adding a 
little every day. The subject is immense; but if I 
have health I hope to compass it." A charming 
glimpse of his life at Northampton in this same year of 
1835 is found in Harriet Martineau's Retrospect of 
Western Travel:^ 

"We had letters of introduction to some of the in- 
habitants of Northampton, and knew that our arrival 
was expected; but we little anticipated such eagerness 
of hospitality as we were met with. The stage was 
stopped by a gentleman who asked for me. It was Mr. 
Bancroft, the historian, then a resident of Northampton. 
He cordially welcomed us as his guests, and ordered the 
stage up the hill to his house; such a house! It stood 
on a lofty terrace, and its balcony overlooked first the 
garden, then the orchard stretching down the slope, 
then the delicious village, and the river with its meadows, 
while opposite rose Mount Holyoke. Far off in the 
valley to the left lay Hadley, half hidden among trees; 
and on the hills, still farther to the left, was Amherst, 
with its college buildings conspicuous on the height. 

> Vol. II, p. 83. 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 221 

" All was in readiness for us, the spacious rooms with 
their cool arrangements (it was the 7th of August), and 
the ladies of the family with their ready merry welcome. 
It was past noon when we arrived, and before the early 
dinner hour we were as much at home as if we had 
been acquainted for months. The American mirth, 
common everywhere, was particularly hearty in this 
house; and as for us, we were intoxicated with the 
beauty of the scene. From the balcony we gazed as 
if it was presently to melt before our eyes. This day, 
I remember, we first tasted green corn, one of the most 
delicious of vegetables, and by some preferred to green 
peas. The greatest drawback is the way in which it is 
necessary to eat it. The cob, eight or ten inches long, 
is held at both ends, and, having been previously 
sprinkled with salt, is nibbled and sucked from end to 
end till all the grains are got out. It looks awkward 
enough: but what is to be done ? Surrendering such a 
vegetable from considerations of grace is not to be 
thought of. 

"After dinner we walked in the blooming garden till 
summoned within doors by callers. My host had al- 
ready discovered my taste for rambling, and determined 
to make me happy during my short visit by driving me 
about the country. He liked nothing better himself. 
His historical researches had stored his memory with 
all the traditions of the valley, of the state, and, I rather 
think, of the whole of New-England. I find the entries 
in my journal of this and the next two days the most 
copious of any during my travels. 

"Mr. Bancroft drove me to Amherst this afternoon. 



222 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

He explained to me the construction of the bridge we 
passed, which is of a remarkably cheap, simple, and safe 
kind for a wooden one. He pointed out to me the seats 
and arrangements of the villages we passed through, and 
amused and interested me with many a tale of the old 
Indian wars. He surprised me by the light he threw 
on the philosophy of society in the United States; a 
light drawn from history, and shed into all the present 
relations of races and parties to each other. I had 
before been pleased with what I knew of the spirit of 
Mr. Bancroft's History of the United States, which, 
however, had not then extended beyond the first volume. 
I now perceived that he was well qualified, in more 
ways than one, for his arduous task. " 

Further topics for Miss Martineau's lively pen were 
a drive to Mt. Holyoke and Sugar Loaf, the gay parties 
on the three evenings of her visit, and the relations be- 
tween the Calvinists and the Unitarians of Northamp- 
ton. 

It was in 1835 that Bancroft moved with his familv to 
Springfield. One letter written while he lived there 
should be given as an early token of a long-enduring 
friendship : 

To R. W. Emerson. 

"Springfield, February 29, 1836. 

"I am very much your debtor for your kindness in 
sending me the quaint and original work of Mr. Car- 
lyle. Should he visit the country, I shall desire the 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 223 

opportunity of his acquaintance, and if within reach of 
his voice, shall gladly become one of his hearers. 

"I am still more obliged to you for your most inter- 
esting and appropriate Historical Discourses. I cannot 
easily tell you, what pleasure I have had in its careful 
perusal. In writing a second edition of my first volume, 
I have taken care to insert a paragraph on the planting 
of Concord. You will see, that it is your Discourse 
which has suggested it. 

"You do me great honour by your kind judgment of 
my labour. I have toiled day and night to get a second 
volume ready. But it is no easy matter to grasp so vast 
a subject firmly enough, to arrange the topics rightly. I 
trust the second volume will win your suffrage. In it 
I have gone largely into the spirit of Quakerism; and 
have had occasion to contrast George Fox and William 
Penn with John Locke. The view, I have taken, from 
what I know of your modes of thought, will not be new 
or disagreeable to you; the public at large may start 
at the truth. But what could I do? If Locke did 
actually embody his philosophy, political and moral, in 
our American Constitution, why not say so in all sim- 
plicity? And if the Quakers were wiser than he, why 
not say that too? Do you remember Locke's chapter 
on enthusiasm? Pennsylvania is the practical refuta- 
tion of his argument. " 

On June 26, 1837, Mrs. Bancroft died, leaving three 
young children, Louisa Dwight, born 1833; John 
Chandler, born 1835, and George, born 1837. The 
Dwight family and Bancroft's own sisters stood ready 



224 GEORGE BANCROFT [I83i-1845 

to help him in every way, and even after he became part 
of an ample establishment in Boston, rendered him 
frequent assistance in caring for his children. Bancroft's 
second marriage, to Mrs. Elizabeth (Davis) Bliss, widow 
of Alexander Bliss of Boston, once a junior partner of 
Daniel Webster, took place August 16, 1838. Mrs. 
Bliss, with her mother, her brothers, and her own two 
boys, had been living in a pleasant house in Winthrop 
Place, Boston, and in this house Bancroft lived through 
the seven years he was to spend in that city. 

The event which brought him to Boston was his ap- 
pointment as Collector of the Port. In the official 
letter, December 30, 1837, announcing President Van 
Buren's selection of Bancroft, Levi Woodbury described 
it as resulting "not only from a high estimation of 
your principles, your talents and acc}uirements, but 
from a conviction of its tendency to ensure harmony 
and advance the public interests within the state of 
Massachusetts." What it did from the party point of 
view was of course to place Bancroft in a position of com- 
manding influence with his fellow Democrats, and of a 
prominence which rendered him more than ever assail- 
able by the Whigs. For business matters, however, 
Bancroft seems always to have had a marked aptitude, 
and Professor Sloane has spoken as follows of his con- 
duct of the collector's office: "When he entered upon 
his duties as collector, the law exacted from importers 
in payment of duties not cash, but bonds payable on 
time. A very large part of the whole revenue of the 
country was then levied in the port of Boston, and the 
amount of bonds received from the importing merchants 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 225 

during Bancroft's period of office reached to very many 
millions. All his predecessors, without exception, had 
left behind them uncollected bonds representing large 
sums, which have not been collected to this day. Of 
all those taken in the period of his service, not one that 
became due was left unsettled, or in arrears, when he 
retired from the office."^ Perhaps especially on senti- 
mental grounds, it is pleasant to know also that he gave 
good appointments in the Custom House to Hawthorne^ 
and Orestes Brownson. 

Just before the middle of 1837 the first Mrs. Bancroft 
had died; just before its end came the news of the ap- 
pointment to the Custom House. The third important 
event of the year for Bancroft was the publication of the 
second volume of his history. Whether the following 
letter refers only to the first or to both the first and the 
second volumes, it is applicable to much of Bancroft's 
earlier writing; and, in lieu of more detailed criticism 
at this point, it may well be cited : 

From Thomas Carlyle to George Bancroft. 

"5, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 

"London, 13^^ June, 1838. 

"Allow me to thank you in words, as in silence I very 
sincerely do, for the gift you have sent me, and the kind 
sentiments accompanying it. The Message, in all its 

* Century Magazine, January, 1887. 

^ For a report of Bancroft's own account of this appointment, 
see Fifty Years among Authors, Books and Publishers. By J. C. 
Derby, pp. 326-327. 



226 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

items, Emerson's and yours, arrived safely here some 
three weeks ago. I have read your Book with attention, 
I may say, with interest and profit, as an earnest faithful 
Book on a subject about which I had much curiosity 
and but httle knowledge. You are bound to persist; 
and bring the business down, to the exit of Washington, 
at any rate. 

"My praises of your Book might honestly be mani- 
fold. I do find several things delineated and visibly 
set before me in form and colour: glimpses of the old 
primeval Forest, in its hot dark strength and tangled 
savagery and putrescence; Virginia Planters with their 
tobacco-pouches, galloping amid the 'buckskin kye' 
(as our Burns has it) in the glades of the wild wood; 
Puritans, stern of visage, warm and sound of heart, 
— all this and much of the like is ocularly there. I 
reckon it a high praise to say that you have more 
than once, in such passages, reminded me of Miil- 
ler's Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft, one of our 
bravest Books, which at the same time you probably 
never read. 

"And then as to my censures, for there are censures 
everywhere, and all things have light and shadow, — I 
should say that your didactic theoretic matter gratified 
me generally much less; that, in a word, you were too 
didactic, went too much into the origins of things gen- 
erally known, into the praise of things only partially 
praisable, only slightly important: on the whole, that 
here is a man who has an eye, and that he ought to 
fling down his spectacles and look with that! — Forgive 
my plainness of speech; did I think less of you than I 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 227 

do, I had omitted this shady side of the business, and 
left only the light. 

"But in any case, many thanks, my dear Sir; and 
right good speed in your work, and in all works you so 
faithfully lay your strength to. I beg a continuance of 
your good-will; and am always 

"Very sincerely yours 

"T. Carlyle." 

During the first year of Bancroft's residence in Boston 
occurred an episode of which the newspapers made 
much at the time. It would not be worth recalling now, 
but for its indication that Bancroft had not yet outgrown 
the "two grand mistakes" which Sparks twelve years 
before had frankly pointed out to him.^ Again the 
trouble was with an editor of the North American 
Review? To the April number of the Review Bancroft 
contributed an article on American historians. His 
first grievance with the editor. Dr. Palfrey, was that, 
when he came to read the proofs, he found a flattering 
and, as Dr. Palfrey had thought, a superfluous, allusion 
to Andrew Jackson removed. He immediately de- 
manded its restoration — or the withdrawal of the entire 
article. Dr. Palfrey ordered the eleven fateful words 
restored, " if it were not too late. It proved on enquiry, 
that the edition was already about half printed, without 
the clause. It was of course restored in the residue, 
and the curious collectors of erudite trifles at a future 

1 See p. 181, footnote. 

^ It is here summarised from published and unpublished letters 
and from Boston newspapers of April, 1838. 



228 GEORGE BANCROFT [I83i-1845 

day may be at a loss to account for the discrepancy be- 
tween different copies of the same article."^ But this 
was by no means the worst. When the article appeared 
Bancroft was outraged at finding interpolated, without 
his knowledge, a brief commendation of his own history. 
As the authorship of the articles in the Review, though 
unsigned, was an open secret, he felt that he would be 
universally charged with praising his own work, and 
deeply resented Dr. Palfrey's course. His friends, es- 
pecially Prescott and Sparks, tried to make him see 
that the matter should not be taken too seriously. 
Pleading, with natural fellow-feeling, for the editor, 
Sparks wrote (April 1, 1838): "As his only motive was 
that of kindness to you, I think you should not view it 
with displeasure, but only with regret; more worthy of 
complaint than censure. . . . Spare the editor as much 
as you can, because his intentions were good, as all the 
world will see, even while they marvel at his manner of 
testifying them." But Bancroft was not to be mollified. 
There ensued a brief, acrimonious correspondence with 
Palfrey, who brought it to an end by returning one of the 
Bancroft letters unopened. Whereupon Bancroft, in an 
address "To the Literary Public," stated his case and 
printed the correspondence in the Boston Post of April 
16, 1838. He certainly achieved his purpose of letting 
the public know that he had not been guilty of self- 
praise, but with much more ado than the necessities 
of the case could really have demanded, and with conse- 
quences of ill-feeling quite out of proportion with Dr. 
Palfrey's offence. In the July number of the Review 
Boston Daily Advertiser, April 27, 1838. 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 229 

appeared the following Note: "A passage occurring in 
the review of American Histories, in our last Number, 
bestows commendation on a work by the author of this 
article. He wishes to have it stated that he had no 
agency in the insertion of that passage." There is 
every reason to suppose that Dr. Palfrey would have 
printed such a note as this under far less vigorous 
compulsion. 

The quality of Bancroft's political ardour at this time 
is illustrated in a letter to John Quincy Adams (March 
26, 1838), urging his consideration of "supporting the 
separation of the Government from banks": 

"I think consistency requires it of you. You have, 
it is true, always supported a National Bank; but never 
an alliance with State Banks. Like Chateaubriand and 
Louis Philippe, you have ever exposed the dangers and 
resisted the establishment of the pet bank system. 

"Respect for the memory of your father points in 
the same direction. It was Hamilton, it was the finan- 
cial aristocracy of that day, which bore down your 
father. That aristocracy is essentially unprincipled. 
It has no fixed opinions of a moral nature; it is only 
blindly adhesive to its material interests. Respect for 
your own fame points in the same direction. To whom 
will you bequeath the care of your memory? To the 
old Federalists ? Their hatred is irreconcilable. To 
the Whigs ? Their deep hostility is scarcely disguised 
by a faint hypocrisy. Meantime there is fast rising in 
New England, a moral Democracy, in harmony with 
Christianity, in harmony with sound philosophy, in 



230 GEORGE BANCROFT [i83i-iS45 

harmony with the progress of civilisation. Your own 
noble opinions, expressed to me frequently, to the 
public so admirably and powerfully in your letters to 
the people of Massachusetts after your defeat by the 
Whigs in the canvass for Governor, are in harmony 
with this Democracy; with these young men who are 
capable of admiring genius and doing homage to up- 
rightness. 

"The Whigs have ever been the obstacle in your 
path. By calling up the great principles of moral 
honesty, and applying these to the present struggle of 
avarice to gain dominion in the country, you will as I 
believe, produce an impression, that never will be for- 
gotten, and endear yourself to the hearts of many young 
men, who will never shrink from your defence. 

"As the battle of New Orleans was the consumma- 
tion of the battle of Bunker Hill, so your defence of the 
separation of Bank and State would be the crowning 
glory to the opposition, which your family has mani- 
fested to the exclusive dominion of wealth. I wish to 
say more: I almost fear I have said too much. But 
as I have on all occasions defended your integrity and 
have avowed myself as one of your supporters for the 
Presidency, I believe you will forgive me. . . ." 

As a federal office-holder Bancroft, of course, had 
many opportunities to express his partisan zeal. In 
February of 1840, for example, we find him in Hart- 
ford, addressing the Democratic Convention of Young 
Men of Connecticut. From this speech one sentence, 
embodying a characteristic thought of Bancroft's, must 



t 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 231 

be quoted: "A hearty sympathy with popular Hberty 
is the sole condition on which an American scholar 
can hope for enduring fame." The seats of learning, 
he was fond of suggesting, are by no means the only 
repositories of wisdom. The Democratic orators, how- 
ever, must have found some of their favourite weapons 
dulled in the very process of attack upon so popular a 
figure as General Harrison. For this was the year of 
the Log Cabin and Hard Cider campaign, and Ban- 
croft, besides preparing the official address to the 
Massachusetts Democracy, had to do his part as an 
active campaigner, against Harrison, for Van Buren. 
A Fourth-of-July celebration in 1840 will serve as a 
type of the political spectacle at which the historian in 
office was expected to display himself. 

The little Worcester County town of Barre was the 
scene of this particular spectacle. The precise truth 
about the day's performances probably lies midway 
between the narratives in the Whig and the Demo- 
cratic papers of Boston. Correspondents both of the 
Post (Democratic) and of the Atlas (Whig) wrote full 
accounts of the celebration. By combining these and 
duly discounting one by means of the other, certain 
facts become prominent. There is no doubt that 
Bancroft found as his rival orator of the day Daniel 
Webster. The Whig reporter says that each party 
claimed the honour of having asked its orator first. 
"Real Facts," writing for the Post, declares that Ban- 
croft was first invited, and that when the Whigs heard 
of it, they secured the "godlike Webster" — "to ex- 
tinguish, overshadow, overwhelm, annihilate the mortal 



232 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

George Bancroft— a mere man of letters — a close 
theorist, at the best, as some of his most forbearing 
political opponents, in excess of candour, affect to speak 
of him." Certain it is that the Whigs brought to- 
gether by far the larger assemblage. Their procession, 
headed by the Fitzwilliam Artillery of New Hamp- 
shire, included, by friendly count, some four thousand 
persons, representing upward of thirty towns. "The 
poor terror-stricken I^ocos" were described by the 
Atlas correspondent as "a huddled file of trembling 
partizans," precisely six hundred in number — "for I 
counted every one, boys and all, twice over." The 
Wliigs were gorgeous with Harrison emblems and 
banners; the Democrats prided themselves on a sim- 
plicity above such trifles. The Whig procession started 
first and went farthest. While it was marching; the 
Democrats began their exercises in the village church. 
Bancroft had not been speaking five minutes, according 
to the Post reporter, when the entire \^^lig procession 
marched by the meeting-house, with such a din and a 
thrusting of banners into the door that he was obliged 
to interrupt his written discourse, and take to extempore 
remarks about his opponents. The Whig version of 
the disturbance of the Democratic exercises is as fol- 
lows: "But the Whigs were certainly not to blame for 
this. They did not know where the Loco Focos were 
— or what they were about. They had not seen them 
at all; and it is possible that there was not an indi- 
vidual in that immense body, who was aware that they 
had paraded on the Green. ... If the shouts and music 
disturbed Mr. Bancroft, it was his own fault; he ought 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 233 

to have had more sense than to attempt to brave the 
current of pubUc opinion as he did." 

For the conduct of the rival feasts, at which the 
Whigs are said to have seated about three thousand 
persons, the Democrats only six or seven hundred, and 
for the effect of the rival speeches, the following portion 
of a letter from a member of the Democratic com- 
mittee will sufficiently speak: 

From A. Alden to George Bancroft. 

"Barre, July 6, 1840. 

"... From all I can hear we had the best — much 
the best celebration. Mr. Webster did not meet the 
expectations of his friends, hundreds of whom went 
away saying, 'We have heard all he said before. We 
wanted to have something new.' This, added to the 
fact that they did not have half enough food on the 
tables, has made many long faces. On the other hand 
there is not one of our men who is not in perfect extacy 
at what they heard from your lips. Meeting one of 
our farmers on the evening of the 4th, he said to me, 
'I have not shed tears before to-day for many years, 
but I could not help crying, I felt so happy when Mr. 
Bancroft was speaking.' From this you may judge 
something of the feeling created in the minds of your 

auditors. 

"A. Alden." 

Declining the request of the Barre committee for a 
copy of his address for publication, and rejoicing in the 



234 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

newly adopted Independent Treasury law as a victory for 
the producing classes, Bancroft wrote, July 10, 1840: 

"... Here lies the reason of the great importance 
of our present political contests. The right to engage 
in them I derive from the Providence of God, who 
gave me birth in this land of freedom; and whose 
mercy spares to me life and the exercise of its powers. 
The accident of being employed in the public service 
can neither increase nor impair the rights and obliga- 
tions of a citizen of Massachusetts. The convictions 
from which I act seem to me so in harmony with the 
whole tendency of the civilised world, that they may 
be defended without passion and without anxiety. 

"For the cordial welcome which I received at your 
hands I acknowledge my indebtedness. In the con- 
test for freedom, there may be momentary reverses; 
but the issue is always safe. The concourse of the 
Democratic yeomanry of Barre and its adjoining towns 
on the 4th may justly diminish anxiety as to the result 
of the coming elections in our own commonwealth. 
That the policy which we defined, will obtain the suf- 
frage of the nation is as certain as that the moral world 
is subject to the government of general laws. The 
progress of Democracy is like the irresistible move- 
ment of the Mississippi towards the sea; there are 
little eddies and side currents which seem to run up 
hill; but the onward course of the mighty mass of 
waters is as certain as the law of gravitation. The 
Democratic principle is the true American principle; 
it is as safe as our independence." 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 235 

When the 1840 elections, state and national, went 
against Bancroft's party, his friends among the Boston 
Whigs were few. Of all the inner circle of scholars 
and writers which gave Boston its glory at this time, 
and to which Bancroft by a natnral right of association 
seemed to belong, the generous, gentle Prescott was 
almost alone in maintaining a friendship that was 
steadfast and intimate. How much of the difficulty 
lay in the mere fact of Bancroft's Democratic sym- 
pathies, and how much in his methods of manifesting 
them, it is hard to say. To one of his Whig opponents, 
the editor of the Courier, he wrote this letter, now 
reminding us that politics were not his only concern: 

To Joseph T. Buckingham. 

"Boston, November 20th, 1840. 

"I send you to-day the volume I promised you. If 
you examine the number and variety of topics discussed, 
I am sure you will see, how much labor the book has 
cost me. 

"I will tell you my motto, which I hope you, who, 
for a whig, are a pretty tolerably fair judge, will think 
I have lived up to. 

Virtue may chuse the high or low degree, 
'Tis just alike to Virtue, and to me; 
Dwell in a monk, or light upon a king, 
She's still the same beloved, contented thing. 
And think not party spirit rules my days; 
I follow Virtue; where she shines I praise: 
Point she to Priest or Elder, Whig or Tory, 
Or round a quaker's beaver cast a glory. 



236 



GEORGE BANCROFT 



[1831-1845 



So wishing you a mind at ease, good digestion, and a 
comfortable fat office under the triumphs of Harrison- 
ism, and the resurrection of that Phenix, the United 
States Bank, I remain 

"best of Whig editors 

"Yours truly 

"G. B." 



A year later, November, 1841, Bancroft was removed 
from his post of Collector of the Port of Boston. His 
wife did not have to say to him, as Mrs. Hawthorne 
said eight years later when her husband lost his Sur- 
veyorship at Salem, "Oh, then, you can write your 
book." Bancroft was always writing his book. Far 
and near he was seeking for fresh material. Agents in 
London and Paris were copying passages from the 
government archives. A curious trace of Bancroft's 
attention to details is found in a letter to his London 
correspondent, sending an engraving of Franklin, from 
which he wanted a frontispiece for his third volume 
produced. "The warts on Franklin's face," he wrote, 
" I wish omitted." The engraver, however, must have 
had in him something which would have responded to 
Cromwell, for in the Bancroft frontispiece the warts 
are still to be seen. Nearer home Bancroft was in 
correspondence with such native scholars as School- 
craft, without whose aid such a chapter as the twenty- 
second in volume HI, fully describing the North Amer- 
ican Indians, could hardly have been written. Again 
we find hira receiving, at his own request, voluminous 
information from the State Lunatic Hospital at Worces- 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 237 

ter upon the nature and causes of the insanity of George 
III. More effective than the help of any paid repre- 
sentative abroad was the assistance which Edward 
Everett as minister to England from 1841 to 1845 
could and did render him. This cooperation in the 
cause of scholarship is the more creditable to the two 
friends because their diverging political views had 
brought them not long before, when Everett was Gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts, even to the point of returning 
each other's personal letters. But the difference came 
to be entirely a thing of the past, and it was through 
Everett's influence that the first steps were taken 
toward Bancroft's extensive and long-continued use 
of private collections of letters and documents in Eng- 
land. 

The third volume of Bancroft's history, completing 
his account of the Period of Colonization, appeared in 
1840. Thus, when he found himself a man of leisure 
in 1841, he found himself also an historian of estab- 
lished reputation. The inherent merits and faults of 
his writing— both to be considered later— had by this 
time clearly disclosed themselves. From the introduc- 
tion of the first volume to the conclusion of his work, 
says Dr. J. Franklin Jameson, "it still continued, as 
our phrase is, to vote for Jackson." ^ But the domi- 
nant note of Democracy, and the very qualities of the 
writing which seem to-day the least acceptable, went 
far to recommend the work to a large portion of the 
public in the thirties and forties. Spirit and manner 

1 See History of Historical Writing in America. By J. Franklin 
Jameson, p. 107. 



238 GEORGE BANCROFT [I83i-1845 

alike were well adapted to the buoyant age of Jackson. 
In following the course of Bancroft's life, as at present, 
it is needed only to look upon his books with the eyes 
of the decades in which they appeared. By so doing 
we can appreciate how much he must have meant 
to democrats, whether written with the small "d" 
of the spirit or with the large "D" of party affiliation. 
We can appreciate also the feelings of those to whom 
Jackson and all his works were anathema. 

It was no easy matter for Harvard to give its LL.D. 
to Andrew Jackson in 1833. Ten years later it paid 
the same honour to his New England supporter, George 
Bancroft. As president of the college, Josiah Quincy 
expressed his concurrence in "the respect entertained 
by the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard Univer- 
sity" for Bancroft's "talents and literary attainments." 
As the American editor of James Grahame's History 
of the United States, it soon became President Quincy's 
task to express himself publicly about Bancroft in terms 
more specific and less flattering. Bancroft retaliated in 
print with spirit; indeed, nearly twenty years later, and 
again after President Quincy's death, he was ready to re- 
turn to the charge with all the resentment of a man who 
felthimself unjustly treated; and he would have done so 
but for the dissuading voice of Robert C. Winthrop.^ A 
complete account of the controversy would fill many 
pages. In brief, it was this : Bancroft, in a footnote in 

' This statement is made after finding the proof of an un- 
published pamphlet, Jolm Clarke of Rhode Island and His 
Accusers. New York, 1863, and reading letters from Mr. Win- 
throp to Mr. Bancroft written in 1862 and 1876. 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND IIISTOR 239 

his second volume, described a statement of Graname's 
about Clarke, an agent of Rhode Island at the Court of 
Charles II, as an "invention." The harshness of the 
term was pointed out to him, and in later editions he 
substituted for "invention," "unwarranted misappre- 
hension." Here, one would suppose, was hardly mat- 
ter for elaborate controversy. If the two historians had 
dealt directly with each other, Grahame would pre- 
sumably have accepted Bancroft's acknowledgment of 
his mistaken use of language, and that would have been 
the end of it. But Bancroft was slow to act; friends 
intervened with conversation, letters, and newspaper 
correspondence; the part which the Rev. George E. 
Ellis played in the matter gave special offense to Ban- 
croft. Naturally Grahame was hurt; naturally his 
American friends who happened to be politically an- 
tagonistic to Bancroft, felt that Grahame should be set 
right, and Bancroft wrong, in the eyes of the public. 
To recite the charges and counter-charges at this late 
day would be quite superfluous. All the right does not 
seem to have been on either side. Yet when one has 
reviewed the entire controversy. President Quincy's 
pamphlet,^ following his Memoir of Grahame in the 
Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Vol. 
XXIX), leaves two rather definite impressions on the 
mind: (1) that the Clarke point did not in itself supply 
a sufficient cause of so great a disturbance; and (2) 

' The Memory of the Late James Grahame, the Historian of 
the United States, Vindicated from the Charges of "Detraction" 
and "Calumny" preferred against him by Mr. George Bancroft, 
and the Conduct of Mr. Bancroft towards that Historian Stated 
and Exposed. By Josiah Quincy. Boston, 1846. 



240 GEORGE BANCROFT [1S31-1S45 

that In the general conditions to which it gave rise 
Bancroft fell short of the generosity and candour which 
have so often distinguished fellow-workers, and even 
rivals, in important fields of labour. 

The few years of Bancroft's private citizenship after 
he ceased to be Collector of the Port of Boston were 
far from idle years. The following passages from let- 
ters to Mrs. Bancroft during one of his expeditions for 
lecturing and the gathering of historical material give 
some idea of his mental and social activities: 

To Mrs. E. D. Bancroft. 

"Philadelphia, December 25, 1842. 

"... I busy myself in running to and fro; but 
whether knowledge is increased thereby, is not so cer- 
tain. Here I have received extraordinary kindnesses: 
almost every one seemed eager to further my views, 
and there were men who in this cold winter weather 
would have gone out with me to the battle grounds. I 
have made some collections of considerable value, but 
have gained more by striking the veins of tradition, and 
hearing anecdotes revived, that let me get glimpses into 
the parties and malignant spirit of old times. Do you 
want a chronicle of events ? I can hardly give one. I 
reached this place on Friday; hurried to Gilpin's where 
I had the most cordial welcome; dined; went below to 
his library; got myself quiet after the jolt in the cars, 
and was in good condition of body and mind before I 
went to speak. I omitted all that related to Dr. John- 
son, and the passage about Washington: I put in a 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 241 

few things extempore: and held the audience attentive 
and satisfied. Indeed the welcome was great and cor- 
dial. . . . 

"Sunday. At church heard Dr. Bethune in the 
morning: called at Lucretia Mott's. Saw the Dal- 
lases, who asked much for you, and invited me to a 
Christmas party this evening, which I declined. I 
dined at Kane's. ... By and bye Dr. Dunglison came 
in, and Mr. Bache, both very profound and scientific. 
I staid till nearly seven. Then an hour in friendly ar- 
gument with Dr. Rush to get at the old papers. Fare- 
well, Dr. Rush; I shall tease you no longer! After this 
I was at Thomas Earle's, the anti-masonic Vice Presi- 
dent: and here I found congregated Lucretia Mott, 
whom I had long been curious to see, and who is rather 
a different person from any I saw before : womanly and 
yet full of zeal : a complete abolitionist: and a thorough 
woman's rights advocate. I staid an hour; and went 
to see Tyson, where a few were congregated. It was 
almost twelve before I got home. To-day Monday: I 
am resolved not to get weary. I will see such of our 
friends as I can; and tomorrow go to Baltimore where 
I must enlighten the people. Confusion be to reporters : 
they spirit a man's manuscripts. If you were with me, 
I might stay from home a little longer; but now I 
remain fixed in being with you January 7th. Tell 
William and Alexander * to take nice care of you. 
Give love to John and George,^ whom William must 
discipline if they err. Question John about his school. 

^ William and Alexander Bliss, Mrs. Bancroft's sons. 
^ The sons of Bancroft's first marriage. 



242 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

Give love to Louisa/ who is I hope, growing methodical : 
and tell Susy,^ I have not forgotten her commission." 

To Mrs. E. D. Bancroft. 

"Ellicott's Mills, December 31, 1842. 

". . .At Annapolis I found some things, that were 
curious, and was well repaid for my visit. It is a 
strange old place, decayed, but hospitable. I believe I 
told you of my evening at Col. Nicholson's, where I 
met Mrs. Randall, the daughter of William Wirt. But 
that day from early morning till late into the evening I 
was among my papers. The next day at nine found 
me at the same place: and I toiled indefatigably till 
^ past seven. Then I went to see the good Chancellor 
Bland, and his most motherly hospitable wife. Bland 
is a thorough Democrat of the most decided character; 
and he poured out the political axioms of democracy 
with a fervor unsurpassed. I never heard such doc- 
trines from the Bench before. As I rose to go away, 
good Mrs. Bland said, 'Stay and eat an oyster.' Pres- 
ently we went out into an adjoining room to a table 
laden with magnificent roasted oysters; large and right 
excellent. At each plate were placed a napkin and an 
oyster knife, and each person was to open his own. 
Then too the table groaned with other delicacies — a 
hospitality equal to anything you can imagine. The 
Chancellor liked to talk with me. Nothing would do 
but I must return to dine the next day. Friday was 

* The daughter of Bancroft's first marriage. 

' The daughter of the second marriage, then in her fourth year. 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 243 

my last day in Annapolis. The night before, after my 
visit to the Chancellor, I toiled at my documents till 
midnight. In the morning I engaged at my desk 
again. Presently a joint committee of the two houses 
waited on me, with a request to address them in the 
evening. Well : I went to my work reading and copy- 
ing till after two: a long morning's work; dined with 
the Chancellor on ever so many good things, wild ducks 
and terrapins: and democracy and law. The Chan- 
cellor is learned and communicative. ' If thou wert by 
my side' I should have remained a week. I liked 
Annapolis. It is so decidedly unlike anything else. 
I worked till twenty minutes or so, before my lecture; 
then hurried on my coat and waistcoat, and went to 
the Senate chamber. The President of the Senate 
escorted me to the chair, and I stood just where Han- 
cock and Washington shook hands, when Washington 
resigned his commission. The room was crowded to 
suffocation. So I made my thanks to the Legislature 
for their distinguished kindness: to the people of An- 
napolis for their hospitality. I told them I was no 
stranger, but assured 'the beauty and intelligence of 
Annapolis,' that I felt as if I had lived on the spot for 
a hundred years, and then mixing extempore with read- 
ing, and detaining the audience only about an hour, 
I poured out upon the Spirit of the Age, with sundry 
digressions upon Washington, and the beautiful ever- 
green Hollies; and the American Press. After I had 
finished, several came to me, and I believe the impres- 
sion was a kind one. They say here, I write well, but 
have no enthusiasm, no life. I think next Monday 



244 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

night at Baltimore I will startle them, and show them, 
that at least I have a voice. I adopted last week a 
clear, but tranquil manner; the newspaper praised; 
but I saw a lady's letter in which she complained that 
I did not give more power to language, etc., etc. After 
lecture, I paid my respects to the Governor. He is 
famous, as the best orator in Maryland. He conversed 
very sensibly on slavery, on Van Buren, and on politics 
generally. 

"Returning to my lodgings, I went immediately to 
work, and continued my toil till one in the morning. 
Then I retired to be roused at four the next morning. 
Less than three hours brought me to this place and a 
breakfast with good Mr. Campbell." 

To Mrs. E. D. Bancroft. 

"Baltimore, January 2, 1843. 

"... Charles Carroll of Carrollton came from the 
Manor to me on Saturday: staid at the Mills over night, 
and made me his guest for yesterday and as much longer 
as I would have remained, urging another visit, with 
you for my companion. Catholics they are: their 
slaves almost two hundred in number; their estate a 
tract of eight miles by six or seven; beautiful land in 
the heart of Maryland, within fifteen miles of Balti- 
more. Some fine Mayday, I will take you there. This 
morning he sent me in his carriage to Ellicott's Mills, 
and Mr. Campbell brought me up to Baltimore. Here 
I remain till Wednesday morning: having seen various 
things enough to make fund for chat for some of these 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 245 

evenings when your Bear draws up his arm-chair, and 
without any trade at all, seeks to win his wife for his 
audience. Already, after being here but a few minutes, 
I find on my table muster books and Council of Safety's 
papers; and I must spend an hour or two or more in 
poring over them. Tomorrow I hope Peter Force will 
come up to see me. Mrs. Carroll asked very much 
after the children: she is also very much cultivated: I 
am told, is a good classical scholar; reads French with 
all ease: but never displays. The housekeeping was 
excellent; and bread and butter, and jellies, every- 
thing made on the plantation. I shall tomorrow dis- 
course upon the Spirit of the Age: the same old six- 
pence which was so well reported in New York: only 
with a few changes and variations. I gave the same 
at Philadelphia and with good acceptance. And now 
my long continued absence draws near its end. No: 
it is a long, long time yet, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thurs- 
day, Friday; and then the glad Saturday. The net 
return for the four weeks, after defraying all expenses 
will be not far from $400. I do not think I would do 
just the same thing again. . . . 

"[P. S.] 

"Mrs. Carroll is to put up prayers for my conversion. 
Her daughter is at a famous Catholic Boarding School 
in N. Y." 

Later in this year (1843) came the great ceremony of 
dedicating the Bunker Hill Monument. With Webster 
for orator, with President Tyler and members of his cabi- 
net for spectators, the occasion was of great importance 



246 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

in Boston; and Bancroft's description of it has more 
than a local interest. 



To Martin Van Buren. 

"Boston, June 22, 1843. 

"... Our celebration on the 17th was very grand; 
the immense concourse of people, the beauty of the day, 
and the universal joyousness formed one of the most 
sublime and most agreeable spectacles I have ever wit- 
nessed. From the Boston State House to Bunker Hill, 
the streets were thronged : pretty, smiling faces beamed 
from every balcony, clustered at the windows; ven- 
tured out upon the roofs; and some daring ones, sat 
proudly elevated on the chimney tops. Webster in his 
speech was heavy: but the audience befriended him. 
I rode to the Hill in the carriage next the President with 
Spencer ^ and Porter.^ The latter is a noisy, coarse, 
shallow politician; lean in ideas, though large enough 
in person. Spencer and he were full of foolish jest, 
but he, most so. Returning, Webster also occupied the 
carriage; and it amused me to see how the others were 
overawed by Webster's presence. I saw at once, why 
Webster was driven from the Cabinet. 

"The dinner was a cold water one, — teetotal — but 
Tyler must have his brandy and water, and it was 
amusing to see him hold his tumbler below the table, 
to get a stiff glass of it, and then duck himself down to 
swallow it unseen. Quite a jest for the Washingtonians. 

"The whigs paid little court to the Cabinet. I 

* John C. Spencer, Secretary of the Treasury. 

* James M. Porter, Secretary of War. 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 247 

called on them on Sunday, once and once only and 
found only officials, and office heelers. There was 
quite a party of the faithless, who haunted them 
constantly. Robert Tyler made a regular onset upon 
Gov. Morton's son; telling him that the next Presi- 
dential question lay between Tyler and Cass, and 
that Gov. Morton ought to run as Vice President on 
the ticket with him. Such fools exist! Of Tyler I 
think better and worse: that is, I had no conception 
that he is so weak a man, as he showed himself here; 
and I think better of his integrity by perceiving how 
incapable he is of a steady judgment. His cabinet 
dupe him. Spencer sees clearly his feebleness, and 
takes the most advantage of it. Tyler thinks his cab- 
inet are planning his re-election, and they are really 
busy for some one else; Spencer who rules all, being 
for Calhoun. 

"The same sort of correspondence which took place 
between Spencer and the Connecticut politicians, w^as 
entered into with some in Maine. 

"But I shall weary you with details. The country 
is not long doomed to remain in the hands of a set of 
men, who have not one distinguishing quality but cor- 
ruption. "Faithfully and with highest respect 

"George Bancroft." 

"Poor Legare * came to his end by a chronic disease, 

which now came suddenly to a crisis. Art could not 

save him." ^ 

' Hugh S. Legare, Secretary of State, ad interim, who died in 
Boston, June 20, 1843. 

2 From the Van Buren Mss., Library of Congress. 



248 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

In May of the next year, 1844, the letters to Mrs. 
Bancroft record another journey to the southward. 
The first of them is from Lindenwald, Van Buren's 
place at Kinderhook, New York. The Baltimore Con- 
vention to nominate a candidate for the presidency was 
on the point of meeting. Bancroft was a Massachusetts 
delegate, and, with the insufficient majority, his first 
choice was Van Buren. The three following letters, 
to Mrs. Bancroft, to Van Buren, and to Polk, give a 
full account of Bancroft's opinions and course in the 
matter. The point of greatest significance in it all is 
the assertion of Bancroft's claim to virtual responsibility 
for the nomination of Polk, the first "Dark Horse" 
presidential candidate chosen by a national convention. 
The claim has appeared before in print, in a letter 
written in Bancroft's old age;^ but the letter to Polk, 
which shall be given here, has the advantage of a con- 
temporary document. 

To Mrs. E. D. Bancroft. 

"Ma?/, 1844. 

"Bound for Washington, dearest wife, I am yet so 
lazy as to take the journey by instalments, and give 
half a day or rather less, to Philadelphia. I found if 
I continue I should not reach Baltimore till midnight: 
and I resolved rather to make my entry there in open 
day. So I pause to take my rest at the inn; for I am 
resolved not to lose the benefit of the journey by mak- 
ing immoderate haste. Since I left Van Buren's I have 

* See American Historical Review, July, 1906. See also 
Schouler's History of the United States, vol. IV, p. 468. Foot-note. 



1831-1845] POLITICS ANDIHISTORY 249 

had none of the dehghts of rural iicenery which I prize 
so much: but instead of them, the jar of steamboats 
and bad railroads; and swarms of pohticians. Ap- 
pearances are now a good deal better for Van Buren; 
though I find but very few, who like the Texas letter 
much better than I do. A little difference of tone on 
that subject, would have effected great unanimity in 
our Baltimore Convention, and I think the issue of the 
contest would have been certain victory. We had on 
the boat from N. Y. the same Col. Beirne whom I saw 
at Linden wald. He is confident the vote of Virginia 
in the convention will be given unanimously for Van 
Buren; and equally confident that Clay will lose the 
state by a majority of five thousand. I found in our 
company also the delegates from Maine and New 
Hampshire and Connecticut. They would not leave 
V. B. for light grounds: they go there with a preference 
for him; and will not abandon that preference except 
for strong reasons. On the whole: I think Van Buren 
will receive the nomination without much doubt. If 
then a spirit of enthusiasm is awakened for him, he 
may yet succeed. As it regards our strength, the tone 
of feeling is improving everywhere; and the sentiment 
of vehement opposition to Henry Clay is avowed with 
a resolution that promises vigorous efforts. , . ." 

To Martin Van Buren. 

"Washington, May 23, Thursday. [1844.] 

"The fever here is very high. I had hardly touched 
the pavement when I found Rantoul at my side. He 



250 GEORGj: BANCROFT [1831-1845 

was full of the Southern feeling: he was sure they 
would not go for V. B. — but they were very reasonable 
men, and the North might select: they would adopt 
any Northern man that was a Texan, be it Cass! or 
Stewart!! or Heaven save the mark, Levi Woodbury!!! 
Buchanan expresses himself firmly and decidedly for 
you. This is the account of his friends; and this is 
the statement of the Tylerites. Connecticut is still un- 
certain; of Virginia I know not what opinion to form: 
Beirne says certainly its whole vote will be V. B.; and 
Dromgoole thinks others. The city is full of disor- 
ganisers; and their first, second, and third words are, 
look at Virginia; where Ritchie, and Roane and Stev- 
enson are opposed to him. One Louisiana delegate is 
in the house with me: he is very furious in the Texas 
matter: it is his first word and his last; I walked with 
him for half an hour to mollify him: but he would not 
be soothed. Texas must immediately become Amer- 
ican or will soon be British. 

"From old Hickory you will see a fresh letter in the 
Globe of tonight. He writes it in favour of V. B. and 
Polk: with Polk, Tennessee is safe; without Polk it 
is gone. And to this the old Hero has set his hand. 
The letter is not his autograph. 

"Great pains were taken last night to make up a 
list of certain and reliable delegates. It was agreed to 
turn out all doubtful ones and take the safe. The 
result as voting by states or by votes per capita was as 
follows : 

[The conjectural list of votes by states is here 
omitted.] 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 251 

"Thus eleven states are counted upon for you on the 
first but not with certainty, giving 154 votes, 138 being 
a majority; and if they vote per Capita the number of 
votes is at least 148. This number may be increased. 
To meet this state of the case, the disorganisers de- 
mand, that a nomination shall be made only by a two- 
thirds vote. For this they can unfortunately plead 
precedents of some weight, in former national conven- 
tions and in this congress in the caucus for nominating 
Speaker and Printer. On this the battle will turn; 
and the point may be severely contested. But I think 
we shall put a face on things before Monday, that will 
make secession an unpopular affair altogether; and I 
think the apprehension of division will favour union, 
Peterkin of Pa. writes letters full of zeal. 

"Never let any body say Mr. V. B. has no friends. 
There are some here to refute that. A great movement 
is apparent. Medary is confident of Ohio. 

"In Haste 

"Yours most truly 

"George Bancroft."^ 

To James Knox Polk. 

"Boston, Juhj 6, 1844. 

"The last time I had the pleasure of conversing 
with you was the fine frosty morning, when, after our 
long interview, we took a quiet walk just before you 
were leaving the scene of your fourteen years' service 
for the arduous and to you most glorious campaign of 
1839. I watched your progress with intensest interest, 

* From the Van Buren Mss., Library of Congress. 



252 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

made the more near and personal by the zeal of our 
friend Harris, and I shared in the exultation that fol- 
lowed your unexampled success. 

"My eye was immediately turned towards you for 
the service of the nation, and our Massachusetts De- 
mocracy which at any rate has to rely on firm opinions 
and men to meet the immense opposition of the proud- 
est and wealthiest aristocracy in our country, and 
which at all times has the hearty sympathy of its friends 
in New England, very readily received and acted upon 
the suggestion of rallying around you on the ticket with 
Van Buren. The convention of 1840 most unwisely 
did not make the nomination and by that neglect 
greatly weakened the ticket. 

"This year before the assembling of the national 
convention of which body I was delegate for the state, 
I did not fail to put myself in correspondence with my 
friends of New Hampshire and New York and in other 
states; and while some friends of Mr. V. B. seemed 
to think that R. M. Johnson should be nominated 
V. P., I took every occasion to express the opinion, in 
which I found afterwards, that Gen. Jackson coincided, 
that the choice should fall on none other than yourself. 
Mr. Wright of New York encouraged me in concentrat- 
ing opinion on you. 

"At the convention I immediately exchanged a few 
words with our friend Gen. Pillow, of your neighbour- 
hood, who conducted himself throughout with the 
modesty and firmness, which deserved highest com- 
mendation; and I renewed my old acquaintance with 
Gen. Donelson. I was able to assure them that 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 253 

on the first ballot for V. P. Massachusetts would 
certainly throw ten, probably twelve votes for 
Yourself. 

" You know the events of Monday and Tuesday. On 
Tuesday many of my friends gave way to despair, 
Cass was gaining. The R. M. Johnson and all doubt- 
ful ones, were ready to join him; this would have 
swelled his vote to 157, and then it would have seemed 
fractious to have held out. It flashed on my mind, 
that it would be alone safe to rally on you. This I 
mentioned to my friend Mr. Carrol of Concord, New 
Hampshire, who fell into it heartily. We spoke with 
Gov. Hubbard; he agreed; and the N. H. delegation 
were fixed. I then opened the matter to our excellent 
friend Gov. Morton of our delegation and he coincided 
and his coinciding was very important. I then went 
to your faithful friends Gen. Pillow and Donelson. 
They informed me that if we of N. E. would lead off, 
they would follow with Mississippi and Alabama and 
some others. Mississippi hesitated. 

"Certain of this, I repaired with Gen. Donelson and 
Pillow to the house where were the delegations of Ohio 
and New York, and I spent the time till midnight in 
arguing with them. Mr. Medary saw the bearings of 
the matter and before I left the hotel assured me his 
delegation would go for Polk rather than for Cass. 
With many of the New York delegation I spoke, but 
opened the matter most fully to our friend Gouverneur 
Kemble, who I think was in congress with you. You 
may suppose that the N. Y. delegation was in a great 
state of agitation. Kemble was calm and decided. 



254 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

After hearing me at length, he gave in his adhesion 
decidedly to my view of the Duty of V. B.'s supporters' 
and such were his statements, that I returned to my 
lodgings. 

"I returned to my lodgings before midnight tranquil 
and happy. I enjoyed as quiet sleep as you did on the 
night before your journey to Warrensburg. In the 
morning I saw my friend Fink, state delegate of Mary- 
land, who heartily came into the scheme, and Pillow 
I believe and I certainly spoke with the principal dele- 
gate from Louisiana, who was at once hearty for the 
course. 

"It came to voting. You should have heard the 
cheers as Hubbard for N. H. and I for Massachusetts 
announced the whole vote of N. H., I the majority of 
Mass. But the thing that pleased me most was, to 
see the Virginia delegation, all vehement for Cass, taken 
aback, and I had a feeling of triumph as I saw Roane 
lead out his Virginia train to consult, and return to 
announce a change of vote from Cass to yourself. 

" On reaching home, I met my constituents in Faneuil 
Hall, the largest Democratic meeting I ever saw there; 
they listened to my tale for an hour and a half, and 
broke the silence only by bursts of delight at the nomi- 
nations. 

"By the special invitation of our N. H, friends I went 
to their great ratification meeting, where I found your 
hearty and ardent friend Franklin Pierce, a man of 
true metal, a fine fellow, when in Congress with you: 
but improved in talent and power by assiduous cult- 
ure. Here was the same enthusiasm. 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 255 

"Day before yesterday I was at Worcester: a great 
gathering: and but one heart. 

"You will be pleased I am sure to know that Mr. 
Van Buren most heartily in conversation and with his 
pen zealously advocates your election. Yesterday I 
received from him a long letter, from which I quote 
confidentially the following words: 

"'The success of the nominees is of vital importance 
to the country. That they will succeed I have not the 
slightest doubt. In this state, unless we get into a dis- 
tracted snarl about our Governor, (which I do not 
anticipate) our success will be very great. It is not 
possible that our friends could be more zealous. . . .' * 

"You can have little leisure to write; were you to 
find a moment's time, I should be charmed to receive a 
letter from you. But at any rate, you may rely on the 
enthusiastic and determined support of the Democracy 
of New England." 

Bancroft was soon involved in an important cam- 
paign of his own — as the Democratic candidate for 
Governor of Massachusetts. His \Vhig opponent was 
George N. Briggs, who received nearly fifteen thousand 
more votes. In the year of a presidential election, in 
a State sure to be found in the Clay column, Bancroft 
could hardly have hoped for other results. The fact 
that he identified himself at this time with Governor 
Dorr of Rhode Island in his fight for a more liberal 

^The omitted portion explains why Bancroft, busy with his 
History, could not at the moment bring out a campaign life of 
Polk, which he had been asked to revise, enlarge and sign. 



256 GEORGE BANCROFT [I83i-1845 

State constitution was particularly obnoxious to the 
conservative element in Massachusetts, which regarded 
the Dorr Rebellion as a reckless assault upon law and 
order. It was in June of 1844 that the trial of Dorr for 
high treason ended in his sentence, afterward remitted, 
of imprisonment for life. The existing order triumphed ; 
but if Bancroft had not brought his allegiance to the 
principles for which the rebellion contended, especially 
the extension of the suffrage, his politics and his his- 
torical writing would have been much farther apart 
than usual. 

Through the autumn his campaigning carried him 
even beyond the Massachusetts borders. 

To Mrs. E. D. Bancroft. 

"Po'keepsie, September 20, 1844. 
"Today, dearest Love, I have a moment's time to 
tell you why I have not written fully. On arriving 
here on Tuesday, I found myself very weary, not get- 
ting here till near midnight. I got not a wink of sleep 
that night, such was the hubbub. On Wednesday, I 
found the town full of Reporters; and to prevent mon- 
strous nonsense being put off as mine, I undertook to 
write my speech. Receiving visits all the morning, and 
going to the fair, and taking a drive round the en- 
virons, and dining out and going to a Soiree in the 
evening, you may suppose it was not easy. But I kept 
my mind quiet, and my attention fixed; and finished 
seasonably stuff enough for a speech of three quarters 
of an hour or more. The audience was immense, but 



1831-1S45] POLITICS AND HISTORY 257 

I think I was heard by all. The dread was that the 
Loco Foco would talk politics. I got their attention, 
more perfectly than I ever did; and it was odd to see, 
how every time they were pleased, they would look and 
consider whether there was not some horrid Loco Foco 
doctrine wrapped up in the sugar. Van Buren came 
in while I was speaking; coming directly on the plat- 
form, where I stood. He came directly upon me; but 
instead of being disconcerted, I turned round and shook 
hands with him, at which there was the most uproarious 
applause. If that was concerted, said two, it could not 
have been better. But all this I dare say you will see 
reverently or burlesquely told in the papers. 

"Speaking of shaking hands, I was introduced to a 
gentleman; the deed was done. Some one whispered 
to him: '^Vllat, the Orator of tomorrow?' — Coming 
up to me, 'Sir, if I had known who it was, I should 
have given a more respectful shake.' . . ." 

To Mrs. E. D. Bancroft. 

"September, 1844. 

"... I suppose you do not write me, because you 
did not like my Poughkeepsie speech. It was merely 
an ornamental extempore; but it satisfied the occasion, 
and I carried my audience with me. Still I give you 
leave to dislike it, since you applaud my Tammany 
speech, and admire my Dorr letter. All agree that the 
Dorr letter is as you said. Van Buren liked my view 
better than his own; and many people have spoken to 
me about it. It is but a very few people in Boston, that 
have savage natures enough to wish to persecute him." 



258 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

To Mrs. E. D. Bancroft. 

" Tuesday night, Oct, 1844. 
"... Do not imagine that it requires courage at 
this time to be a democrat! What is more ridiculous 
than Clay's position? What is more ridiculous than 
Webster's relations to Clay? What is more absurd 
than their two-sided policy about Texas ? What is 
more monstrous than their proposition to protect labour 
by taxing labourers out of all proportion ? Were I one 
of them, my heart would sink within me, many fathoms 
deep. I should feel guilty and oppressed. But to 
support democracy may give a quiet heart and tranquil 
sleep, and a good wife and loving children." * 

When Polk and Dallas were elected, it soon became 
evident that Bancroft's political labours were not to go 
unrequited. A correspondent in Mobile wrote him, 
December 6, 1844, of his desire to see Bancroft in the 
Cabinet, and his intention to express this feeling in a 
Mobile newspaper. In replying to him Bancroft said : 
"I received your very friendly notice in the Mobile 
Register, and I shall show to you, how deeply I recog- 
nise the sincerity of your regard, by using with you the 

' The Rev. J. W. Chadwick, in his William Ellery Charming 
(p. 277, foot-note) has told the following story, for which he was 
indebted to Senator Hoar: "A democrat was a social pariah. 
George Bancroft, gentleman and scholar, after a brilliant candi- 
dacy for the governorship of Massachusetts, met a lady of the 
Whig aristocracy on the street, and said to her, 'I did not find 
you at home when I called.' ' No,' she answered, ' and you never 
will.'" The manners of the "lady of the Whig aristocracy" are 
not commented upon. 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 259 

utmost frankness. There are many reasons why I 
do not desire a post in the cabinet, among others, it 
would interfere too much with my Hterary pursuits. A 
foreign mission would better chime with my inclina- 
tions." 

As the time for Polk to announce his appointments 
drew near, Bancroft himself was not far from the po- 
litical centre. The following passages from letters to 
his wife sufficiently tell the story of what he saw and 
heard : 

To Mrs. E. D. Bancroft. 

"Washington, D. C. February 15, 1845. 

"... The President elect keeps his own counsels 
most closely; but some of those in the street seem to 
think, that the husband of a woman like yourself, 
should assuredly be one of the Clerks of the President; 
and as people do not know the cause of my coming 
here, they draw queer inferences. Time will unfold all 
things, among the rest whether you are to mope in 
Winthrop-place; or reign in Washington; or freeze 
your nose in some German Lapland; but of one thing 
I am resolved, which is one day or other to show you 
more of the world, than you have seen in the last five 
years. . . . 

"After dinner I left a card on J. C. Calhoun; and 
with Gilpin spent an hour with Benton and his most 
interesting son-in-law Lieutenant Fremont. To hear 
him talk of the Oregon country seemed like being 
carried among snowcapped mountains of Switzerland; 



260 GEORGE BANCROFT [1831-1845 

and his account of the valleys and beautiful runs of 
water were enough almost to make you think that the 
Garden of Eden was the other side of the mountains. 
I had no idea, that there were so many ranges of 
mountains, or so beautifully picturesque and inviting 
a region; destined you may be sure to be filled by 
Yankees, and whether under our government or not to 
be peopled by men who have no notion of owing 
allegiance to any power but of their own selection. . . ." 

On February 20th he wrote: "Mr. Polk keeps 
the secret of his cabinet appointments; nor will they 
probably be known before the fifth of March. If any- 
body asks about me, say I shall probably go envoy to 
Japan." In a letter of March 2d he said: "I write 
tonight to enjoin on you secrecy; to be surprised at 
nothing; to be displeased at nothing. Things here are 
arranged in a manner you know nothing [about]; and 
entirely to my personal satisfaction. You too will be 
satisfied, when you come to know." 

The great secret was Bancroft's appointment as 
Secretary of the Navy in Polk's Cabinet. Political op- 
ponents in Massachusetts attempted to block his con- 
firmation by calling the attention of a Virginia Senator 
to Bancroft's utterances against slavery. But another 
Senator secured from Bancroft a list of all his writings 
on the subject, and stated his case before the Sen- 
ate, which confirmed him without a dissenting vote.^ 
Bancroft's note on the subject to his wife was as fol- 
lows: 

' See Century Magazine, January, 1887. 



1831-1845] POLITICS AND HISTORY 261 

To Mrs. E. D. Bancroft. 

"City of Washington, March 6, 1845. 
r" "Having dined yesterday at Blair's and seen a wed- 
ding at Col. Benton's, and watched a fire as it burned 
down a theatre and a row of houses, I might have 
much to say. But the time is short; and I write merely 
to explain to you the cause of the Senate's not acting 
today upon my affair. It springs from no hostility, 
but a rule of the Senate made a delay till Monday 
proper. So you will have to address me as a private 
citizen till Monday next: after which the Secretary of 
the Navy will lay his laurels, no not that, his trident 
at your feet. I write lest some mischievous letter- 
writers might pervert the matter. There is no opposi- 
tion to my confirmation; but a Senator insisted on 
following the strict letter and routine. Love to all." 

It has sometimes been said that Bancroft's lack of 
popularity in Massachusetts was due in part to his early 
recognition of the fact that New England was not the 
whole country. To be called from Massachusetts to a 
post so conspicuously national as that of Secretary of 
the Navy must certainly have compensated him for 
many things. 



I 



SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 



1845—1846 



On the first of January, 1845, Bancroft wrote to 
James K. Polk, President-elect: "A post in the Cab- 
inet has not seemed to me at this time the position 
most favourable to my efficiency. Many years' close 
attention and continual investigation on my part have 
made the public wish somewhat general that I should 
as speedily as possible conclude the History which I 
have undertaken of the United States; and the foreign 
service of the country in England, in France or in Ger- 
many is the only position which would favour that end. 
When I was a very young man I passed three years or 
more in France and Germany, and during that period 
a winter in Berlin. The German language, as well as 
the French, is almost as familiar to me as the English. 
In making up your arrangement for the foreign corps, 
if the mission to Prussia were offered me, I should 
certainly accept it." 

It is hardly to be supposed that Bancroft, having 
stated his wishes with such frankness, could have 
looked upon the navy portfolio as their complete ful- 
filment. If there is nothing to indicate specifically that 

262 



1845-1846] SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 263 

it was regarded as a stepping-stone to his true desire, 
the event shows that it took this place. Yet in the year 
and a half through which he administered the Navy 
Department, he displayed all the zeal and efficiency of 
one whose whole heart was in the present task. 

"Without my being a candidate for a post in the 
cabinet," Bancroft wrote to Marcus Morton, March 
10, 1845, *'and against my avowed predilections, I 
have been called to that station, and if the Senate 
consent, shall enter upon it in a few days. It is my 
fixed purpose to govern myself there by two maxims: 
First, regard to the public service; and next to act as 
if the eye of the whole democracy watched every 
motion and its ear heard every word I shall utter. 
Duty and publicity will be my watchwords; and in 
great matters or small, I will do nothing in secret. If 
asked about appointments, I shall give such answers, 
as I shall be willing to have read to the world, that is to 
all the little world that takes an interest in such things." 

On the very threshold of his official career, Van 
Buren had given him (March 7, 1845) the following ex- 
cellent counsel: "Suppress the ardour of your tempera- 
ment. Keep cool. Stand aloof from all schemes and 
intrigues of which you will soon see abundance. Let 
your course be distinguished by a singleness of devo- 
tion to the duties of your Department, and the time 
will come when you will find an advantage from this 
course beyond what is the ordinary reward of virtuous 
actions." 

In a letter of April 14, Bancroft made reply: "Fol- 
lowing your advice, I have quietly devoted myself to my 



264 GEORGE BANCROFT [1845-1846 

duty, which is arduous enough, and take as httle share 
in the distribution of office as is consistent with fidehty 
to my tried friends." The files of Bancroft's corre- 
spondence at this time reveal "tried friends" in such 
multitudes that the answering of their importunities on 
behalf of other friends and of themselves must have 
occupied a very considerable portion of the Secretary's 
time. From all these letters one must be chosen, less 
for its value as a type than because of its intrinsic in- 
terest. It is indeed exceptional, in that it is not ad- 
dressed to Bancroft himself. 

From Charles Sumner to Mrs. Bancroft. 

"Boston, January 9ih, 1846. 

"You will think that I never appear, except as a 
beggar. Very well. I never beg for myself. But I 
do beg now most earnestly for another; for a friend of 
mine, and of your husband's; for a man of letters, of 
gentleness. 

"I have heard to-day of the poverty of Hawthorne. 
He is very poor indeed. He has already broken up 
the humble and inexpensive house which he had es- 
tablished in Concord, because it was too expensive. 
You know how simply he lived. He lived almost on 
nothing; but even that nothing has gone. Let me say 
to your husband, not to you (for I would not quote 
Latin to a lady) 

"'iVi7 hahuit Codrus. Quis enim negatf et tamen 
illud 
Perdidit iiifelix toturn nihil.' 



1845-1846] SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 265 

Some of his savings were lent to Mr. Ripley at Brook 
Farm; but he is not able to repay them, and poor 
Hawthorne (that sweet, gentle, true nature) has not 
wherewithal to live. I need not speak of his genius to 
you. He is an ornament of the country; nor is there a 
person of any party who would not hear with delight 
that the author of such Goldsmithian prose, as he 
writes, had received honour and office from his country. 
I plead for him earnestly, and count upon your friendly 
interference to keep his name present to the mind of 
your husband, so that it may not be pushed out of 
sight by the intrusive legion of clamorous office-seekers, 
or by other public cares. 

"Some post-office, some custom house, something, 
that will yield daily bread, — anything in the gift of your 
husband — or that his potent influence might command 
— will confer great happiness upon Hawthorne; and, 
I believe, dear Mrs. Bancroft, it will confer greater 
upon you; feeling, as I do, that all true kindness blesses 
him that bestows it more even than it blesses the receiver. 

" I wish I could have some assurance from your hus- 
band that Hawthorne shall be cared for. . . . 

"I wrote your husband lately on peace; but he will not 

heed my words. 

"Believe me, dear Mrs. Bancroft, 

,,-^ . , C provided you do not ) 

Yours smcerely < ^. tt -i r 

( forget Hawthorne ) 

"Charles Sumner." 

Bancroft's reply ^ to Sumner's letter on peace, and 
* Original in Sumner Collection, Harvard College Library. 



266 GEORGE BANCROFT [1845-1846 

incidentally to the Hawthorne question, may best be 
given here, though its allusions to the Oregon boundary 
are at this point somewhat premature. 

To Charles Sumner, 

"Washington, Jayiuary 13, 1846. 

"I am more of a peace man than you; as you will 
find in the end. For that object I would not for a 
moment listen to a scheme for mixing up the Oregon 
question with schemes of literary ambition. I know 
no better referees than the plenipotentiaries of two such 
enlightened states as Great Britain and the United 
States; and if our rights are asserted with unanimity 
and dignity, I have no doubt England will do us 
justice, which is all we want. I fear nothing but divi- 
sions at home, which may impel England to un- 
reasonable and impossible demands. 

"I was amused at your suggestion of referees. Did 
not Sparks discover and father upon Franklin a Red 
Line, that had nothing to do with the subject; but to 
be used as a terror to the legislature of Maine ? Has 
not Prescott denounced us all as violators of interna- 
tional law and breakers of the Constitution, against the 
opinion of Congress and his country, and against the 
action of the Supreme Court? And if Congress, and 
the Executive and the Judiciary all acting in harmony, 
cannot setde a constitutional question to his satisfac- 
tion, how do we know what would happen about 
Oregon? And has not Guizot committed himself as 
minister under whose auspices a declaration has been 



1845-1846] SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 267 

made, that cette Jois Ics Anglois out raisonf And has 
he not exerted himself to narrow the boundaries of our 
union, and to create antagonistic powers? Oh Mr. 
Sumner; Mr. Sumner! You must not only cry peace, 
but you must seek peace, and you will find it in the 
paths of patriotism and justice. 

"As to Hawthorne, I have been most perseveringly 
his friend. I am glad you go for the good rule of dis- 
missing wicked Whigs and putting in Democrats. Set 
me down as without influence, if so soon as the course 
of business will properly permit, you do not find Haw- 
thorne an office holder." 

On the fifth of March, 1846, Bancroft wrote to 
President Polk, endorsing the appointment of Haw- 
thorne as Surveyor at the Salem Custom House, the 
post which he received. 

An important letter to one who was not seeking 
office, but whom it sought, was written in the early 
days of the Polk administration, with which it reveals 
Bancroft's intimate connection. It also reveals the 
seriousness with which Polk and his advisers were 
considering the means of bringing to a satisfactory end 
the controversy between the United States and Great 
Britain on the Oregon boundary line. 'Fifty-four 
forty or fight" had not yet become the party cry, but 
the spirit from which it sprang was already at work. 

To Martin Van Buren. 

"Washington, May 5, 1845. 
"I might feel embarrassment at writing to you to- 



268 GEORGE BANCROFT [1845-184G 

night, were not personal affection and the public in- 
terest so entirely united in what I am going to say. 

"The critical state of the relations with England 
render the mission to that country, always the highest 
foreign station, now of peculiar and the gravest im- 
portance. The British minister at this place has, it 
is true, full powers to negotiate a settlement of the 
Oregon Question: and the affair is proceeding in a 
manner that will I am sure, obtain your approbation. 
But the excited condition of the English mind and the 
feeling manifested by the ministry render it essential 
that the envoy to the Court of St. James should be 
foremost among the first men of the land for experi- 
ence, previous high station, acknowledged dignity and 
weight of character, ability and influence; and the 
President and the unanimous voice of the cabinet have 
singled you out for that station. 

"The President does me the honour to make me 
the organ of communicating to you his earnest wish 
on this subject. He was preparing to write to you 
himself, but I begged to be permitted to make the 
communication to you. My affection prompted me 
to this; for I could mingle more of private views 
with all that is public in this very important propo- 
sition. 

"It is true, that some weeks ago, and before the 
Oregon question became a grave one, Mr. Polk had 
tendered this mission to South Carolina.^ What his 
motives were for this, you can surmise as well as I. 

' For another allusion to this offer of the English mission to 
Calhoun, see Benton, Thirty Years' View, II, G50. 



1845-1846] SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 2G9 

But I, who knew the rehitions of many of your personal 
friends towards Mr. Calhoun, and had seen the Presi- 
dent resohitely omit to place Mr. Calhoun in his cab- 
inet, confess that I thought well of this resolution. But 
since the jealousy with England has occurred, I have 
reasoned that public considerations must outweigh all 
others; and have found myself in harmony with the 
President and others in thinking that you are the man, 
to bear the olive-branch across the Atlantic. 

"You have been President. A greater reason for 
your selection. You would assuredly represent the 
country. In Europe the prime ministers are always 
selected on such occasions. Witness Metternich to 
Napoleon; Guizot lately to England; and Talleyrand, 
Marshall Soult, and others. On great occasions the 
highest men are to be taken; where war is to be averted, 
none but the highest. 

" I must quote your own avowed opinion also. Mr. 
Butler told me, that you had expressed to him that in 
your view an Ex-President could be honourably em- 
ployed in a foreign mission.^ It was not till since the 
Oregon difficulty occurred, that I have repeated this 
remark of Mr. Butler's; and added the belief which 
he will confirm to you, that he joins with me in the hope 
of your accepting the mission to England. We are 
your affectionate friends, and we entreat that you will 
do so. The President eagerly and earnestly proposed 
his wish to see you in that station the first moment, that 

1 B. F. Butler, of New York, Attorney-General under Jackson 
and Van Buren, subsequently wrote to Bancroft in effect that he 
(Bancroft) had made too much of Van Buren's casual remark. 



270 GEORGE BANCROFT ri845-i846 

he became persuaded of your receiving the suggestion 
as a subject for your consideration and dehberate de- 
cision, 

"The country would witness your acceptance of the 
post with unanimous satisfaction. It would be taken 
as evidence that American rights and the peace of the 
world are both to be maintained. The joy of the nation 
would be unmingled; and what right have you to with- 
hold yourself from rendering most essential service to 
the continuance of peace and the happiness of man- 
kind? 

''You once were in England and were rejected by a 
faction. ^Vhat poetical justice in returning there with 
the undivided acclamations of the country! 

"You owe it to your country to go. Let me add, 
you owe it to yourself. You love society; from the 
stations you have filled you would appear in England 
as our first citizen, and would be welcomed to all that 
there is there of refinement and hospitality. 

"The expense would be considerable; but the outfit 
and salary and your private income would place at 
your easy disposal twenty thousand a year for a couple 
of years. If you chose to remain a less time, the propor- 
tion would be greater. If you remained longer, the ex- 
pense would somewhat diminish. Do you laugh as you 
read this ? The lady Angelica and I have reasoned it 
out, that your personal happiness for life will be im- 
proved by an excursion to England, and if you doubt, 
ask Mr. Butler, or ask the lady herself. 

"It is due to Mr. Polk to say, that if I write this 
letter to you instead of the President, it is at my per- 



1845-1846] SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 271 

sonal solicitation. His own mind has been firm in its 
desire of seeing you in the post proposed, from the first 
moment that the state of pubHc affairs led any of us 
to think that your services might properly be demanded 
in the name of the country. What more can I say ? If 
anything can be added to make the suggestion agree- 
able to you, you may safely consider it as uttered by 
the President, and reiterated by every member of his 
cabinet. 

"With most affectionate respect 
"Yours ever 

"George Bancroft." 

Van Buren's answer was as follows: 

From Martin Van Buren to George Bancroft. 

"LiNDENWALD, May I2th, 1845. 

"Your kind letter conveying to me the desire of the 
President that I should accept of the Mission to Eng- 
land was duly received, as was also, by the same mail, 
one from Mr. Butler enclosing a communication from 
the President to him of like import. 

"I appreciate very highly the friendly and com- 
plimentary views, which, I am assured, have been 
taken of the question, in connection with myself, by 
the President and his Cabinet, and beg you to make 
to them my very respectful and sincere acknowledg- 
ments for this gratifying proof of their respect and con- 
fidence. 

" It can scarcely be necessary to say that I have be- 



272 GEORGE BANCROFT [1845-1846 

stowed on the proposition all the consideration which 
is due to the gravity and importance of the subject, 
influenced by an unfeigned desire to promote, by all 
proper means, the patriotic views of the President in 
regard to this responsible portion of his official duties. 
I have no recollection of having expressed to my friend 
Mr. Butler the opinion to which you allude,, yet, if 
you did not misunderstand him, I doubtless did so; 
and I certainly was never apprised of the remaining 
portion of his remarks to you until I received your 
letter. I have, however, no hesitation in saying that, 
in my opinion, there would be no incompatibility with 
his former position in the councils of the Nation, for 
an Ex-President to accept, under suitable circum- 
stances, an important Foreign Mission; and farther, 
that an emergency in the affairs of the country might 
arise and be presented to his consideration by the 
Executive which would make it his imperative duty to 
overlook minor considerations, and devote himself to 
the public service in the form proposed, at almost any 
expense of personal feeling or preference for retirement. 
"I am however obliged to inform you, that after a 
very deliberate consideration of the case as presented 
in the letters of the President and yourself, taken in 
connection with the avowed intentions of the Govern- 
ment in regard to that branch of the negotiations which 
constitutes at least the ostensible ground of the recent 
outbreak in Parliament, I have found myself unable to 
regard it as of a nature to make the acceptance of the 
proposed Mission on my part either a duty of the 
character I have described, or, under the circum- 



1S45-184G] SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 273 

stances by which its present offer is surrounded, agree- 
able. You may, however, inform the President, and 
I beg you to do so, that should a crisis in the affairs of 
the country like that to which I have alluded here- 
after occur, or its present existence be made manifest, 
and in which there is reason to believe that the public 
service can be essentially promoted by any honourable 
efforts of mine, they will not, if called for, be withheld 
from personal considerations of any description. I 
would on the contrary rejoice in any fair opportunity 
to repay, in part at least, the large debt of gratitude 
which I owe to the country, in a form which shall be 
free from misconstruction or reasonable exceptions. 

"The marked and warm interest you have mani- 
fested in this matter, not only in respect to its public, 
but also to its personal bearings are entitled to my very 
grateful acknowledgments. Believe me, my dear sir, 
that they are very cordially rendered, and that 
"I am, as heretofore, 

''Your sincere friend 

"M. Van Buren. 

"P. S.— I send this through Mr. Butler that it may 
perform a double office," 

Having served as the mouthpiece of the Polk ad- 
ministration in its dealings with a living ex-President, 
it soon fell to Bancroft's lot to pronounce the official 
eulogy upon a dead leader. On June 8, 1845, Andrew 
Jackson died. On June 27th, there was a commemora- 
tion, in Washington, of his death, and Bancroft was the 
orator of the day. The capacity for formulating demo- 



274 GEORGE BANCROFT [1845-1846 

cratic doctrine which had made Bancroft so vakiable 
to his party in Massachusetts now stood him in good 
stead. There could have been no more congenial task 
than to celebrate and interpret the life of the dem- 
ocratic chieftain. With reference to Jackson's death 
it has been said that ''only those who had felt his favours 
came forward to pronounce his eulogy."^ The extent of 
Bancroft's direct indebtedness to Jackson seems to 
have been that Bancroft, by Jackson's special direction, 
was to have access to the biographical papers com- 
mitted to Amos Kendall and used by him in preparing 
his Life of Jackson? The biography which it was 
hoped Bancroft would write was never written, and of 
course his history stopped far short of Jackson's time. 
To the oration alone, then, we must look for Bancroft's 
estimate of Jackson. Of the orator as such, an his- 
torian of the Polk administration wrote immediately 
upon its close: "As a speaker his manner is not pre- 
possessing. Nature has not favoured him with a rich 
and melodious voice, or a dignified and attractive 
presence. But the gorgeous imagery and the sparkling 
gems which ornament his language, gild the philosoph- 
ical thought and classical erudition, and display the 
intellectual wealth which years of research have enabled 
him to acquire." ^ The Jackson oration is, indeed, one 
of the most characteristic and effective specimens of 
Bancroft's " occasional " utterances. In a day of florid 

' See History of the United States, by James Schouler, Vol. IV 
p. 504, note. 

2 Van Buren Mss. (October, 1837), Library of Congress. 
^ See The Polk Administration, by Lucien B. Chase, p. 25. 



1845-1S46] SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 275 

oratory, it had all the floridity natural to Bancroft's 
style; and beneath the ornamented surface there was 
the substance of genuine sympathy with democratic 
principles and their most eminent exemplar. It is 
altogether a significant expression of Bancroft the man 
of letters in relation to his party. 

The enduring monument of Bancroft's work in the 
Cabinet of Polk is found rather in what he did than in 
anything he said. The Naval Academy at Annapolis 
owes its inception to Bancroft's administrative ability. 
The need of a school for naval officers had long been 
recognised, but the recommendations of many secre- 
taries had been of no avail. When Bancroft took 
charge of the Navy Department, the school seemed 
almost as far in the future as ever. On October 10, 
1845, it was formally opened. 

"Thus it was," says the historian of the Naval Acad- 
emy, in a passage which need be neither abridged nor 
expanded, "that in four months after the first incep- 
tion of the plan, and less than eight months after as- 
suming the duties of his office, Secretary Bancroft was 
enabled to present to the country a fully-organised 
academy, in efficient working order, which was destined 
to do for the Navy what West Point had so long done 
for the Army. He had accomplished during a single 
recess of Congress what his predecessors had for thirty 
years in vain attempted to secure by legislation; and 
it had been done simply by a more judicious application 
of the means which Congress had already provided. 
In his annual report of December 1, 1845, he stated 
briefly the steps he had taken: 



276 GEORGE BANCROFT [1S45-1846 

"'Congress, in its great desire to improve the Navy, 
had permitted the Department to employ professors and 
instructors at an annual cost of S28,200; and it had 
been used, besides the few employed at the receiving- 
ships and the Naval Asylum, to send professors with 
the midshipmen to every ocean and every clime. But 
the ship is not friendly to study, and the office of profes- 
sor rapidly declined into a sinecure; often not so much 
was done as the elder officers would cheerfully do for 
their juniors. The teachers on board of the receiving- 
ships gave little instruction, or none whatever; so that 
the expenditure was fruitless of great results. Many of 
the professors were able and willing, but the system 
was a bad one. The idea naturally suggested itself of 
seizing the time when the midshipmen are on shore and 
appropriating it to their culture. Instead of sending 
migratory professors to sea with each handful of mid- 
shipmen, the midshipmen themselves, in the intervals 
between sea-duty, might be collected in a body and de- 
vote their time to suitable instruction. For the pay of 
the instructors Congress has provided. In looking out 
for a modest shelter for the pupils, I was encouraged 
to ask for Fort Severn, at Annapolis. The transfer was 
readily made by order of the Secretary of War, and a 
school was immediately organised on an unostentatious 
and frugal plan. This institution, by giving some pre- 
liminary instruction to the midshipmen before their 
first cruise; by extending an affectionate but firm 
supervision over them as they return from sea; by 
providing them suitable culture before they pass to a 
higher grade; by rejecting from the service all who fail 



1845-1846] SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 277 

in capacity or in good disposition to use their time well, 
will go far to renovate and improve the American Navy. 
"'The plan pursued has been unpretending, but it 
is hoped will prove efficient. A few professors give 
more and better instruction than four-and-twenty at 
sea. No supernumerary officer has been ordered to 
Annapolis; no idle man is attached to the establish- 
ment. Commander Buchanan, to whom the organi- 
sation of the school was intrusted, has carried his 
instructions into effect with precision and sound 
judgment, and with a wise adaptation of simple and 
moderate means to a great and noble end.* " ^ 

With Bancroft Hall as the central structure of the 
imposing buildings in which the officers of the new 
navy receive their first professional training, the debt of 
the country to the Secretary who founded the Academy 
will not soon be forgotten. Of another administrative 
matter which claimed his attention we have also his 
own account: 

"When I became Secretary of the Navy," he wrote 
to Dr. S. A. Allibone, October 11, 1856, "the Observ- 
atory was already in existence and under the superin- 
tendence of Maury. It was then known officially as 
the Depot for Charts, but Congress had not expressly 
sanctioned the Observatory by name. Mr. J. Q. Adams 
still cherished the hope of being the founder of a 
National Observatory. In conjunction with Lieut. 
Maury and taking counsel also of the best scientific 

1 See Historical Sketch of the United States Naval Acadermj. By 
James Russell Soley, pp. 74-76. 



278 GEORGE BANCROFT [1845-1846 

men, I got large appropriations for the Institution, in- 
troduced under Mr. Maury, scientific men, for exam- 
ple Sears Walker, and in a word did all I could to carry 
forward and perfect what I found begun. I have no 
right to be called in any sense the Originator of the 
Observatory. But I contributed ray part while in 
office, to procure for it so complete instruments and 
observers, as superseded Mr. Adams' scheme, as he 
himself once said to me." 

While Bancroft in his public capacity was achieving 
the establishment of the Naval Academy, his private 
life was shadowed by the illness and death of the only 
child of his second marriage. This daughter, Susan 
Jackson, was born May 30, 1839. Letters of 1845 from 
Bancroft in Washington to his wife in Boston betray 
much anxiety about the child's health. In October her 
mother stopped with her in Philadelphia on the way 
to Washington. There her illness became critical, and, 
despite the best of care in that city of skilful physi- 
cians, she died. The two sons of the first marriage 
were at school in Roxbury. Their older sister, I.,ouisa, 
now a girl of twelve, had the nurture both of her 
mother's family in Springfield and of her father's 
household in W^ashington. The two sons of Mrs. Ban- 
croft, William and Alexander Bliss, were members re- 
spectively of the classes of 1846 and 1847 at Harvard 
College. It was hardly possible, in all the circum- 
stances, for Mrs. Bancroft to make the Washington 
house at this time so much a centre of social activity as 
the home of Bancroft generally was. 



1845-1846] SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 279 

Bancroft's personal letters in this period do not 
throw all the light one could wish upon the great events 
of Polk's administration. With the Walker Tariff and 
the Independent Treasury, both established in 1846, 
he had, as head of the Navy Department, but a second- 
ary concern. When he left the Cabinet after eighteen 
months of service the Mexican war was still unfinished, 
the Oregon boundary controversy was settled. The fol- 
lowing letters, dealing more fully with the second of these 
subjects than with the first, have their historical value: 

To William Sturgis. 

"Washington, August 25, 1845. 

"... I am sorry you did not see Mr. McLane.^ 
It would, however, have had no effect on the general 
subject, as I had conversed with him before he went 
and possessed him of your views. The difficulty lies 
in England's watching the progress of this country with 
fear, apprehension, and jealousy: and she will find her- 
self on the Oregon question as impotent as on that of 
Texas. The present and all future colonists of Oregon 
prefer connection with a government that leaves them 
to govern themselves to one with a government that 
asserts authority. If all Oregon were ceded to Eng- 
land today, she could not keep it. Her interest for an 
arrangement is greater than ours. She deceives herself 
by the consciousness of her naval superiority; but her 
ships would be powerless. They could enter a harbour, 
but how could they occupy it ? The solitude of Nootka 

' Louis McLane, U. S. Minister to England. 



280 GEORGE BANCROFT [1845-1846 

Sound after a half century's pretended occupation, 
should teach wisdom. But wisdom is not taught in 
advance; England may yet be compelled to learn it by 
a destiny which she cannot control. Meantime you 
and I have done our duty faithfully, and should have 
written on our tombs, 'Here lie men who gave good 
advice affecting the peace of the world.'" 

To Louis McLane. 

"Washington, December 12, 1845. 

"Mr. Robert Lemon, for whom I enclose a letter, is 
the chief clerk in the State Paper Office, and by the 
permission of the British Secretary of State, makes 
copies for me of old documents, relating to American 
history. During the period of Mr. Everett's stay in 
England I received from him constantly parcels, which 
came to me in the Despatch Bag of the Department. 
If he sends you any for me, may I rely on you to send 
them to me in that way, or in any other, that may 
seem more appropriate? 

"We are here at the opening of a Congress, which 
confides in the Executive more fully, than has ever 
been the case within my memory. The temperate tone 
of Mr. Buchanan, combined with the clear enunciation 
of American Principles by the President, has con- 
ciliated the good sense of the country to the side" of the 
administration, and the decisive and astonishingly 
successful result of the Texan Negotiation has given it 
the character of good fortune. Slidell, our minister in 
Mexico, an excellent French and Spanish scholar, may 
arrange all our affairs with that power, almost before 



1845-1846] SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 281 

Europe is aware of the renewal of the negotiations. 
But this may be too much to hope. 

"A few weeks ago a letter came to me from Mr. 
Edward Everett, desiring the President's permission to 
write a letter to Lord Aberdeen on our affairs in Oregon. 
I simply read the letter to the President, and as from 
myself, without asking the President to interfere, de- 
clined presenting his request. It sometimes occurs to 
me, that Mr. E's too great willingness to accommodate 
matters with England, may have increased the ex- 
pectation of terms on our part, that this country would 
reject with unanimity. If anything can bring England 
to a modest and sensible vew of the subject, I think it 
must be the vast superiority displayed by Buchanan in 
his papers with Pakenham, and the mixture of calmness 
and love of peace with feai"lessness and decision in the 
President's message. The success of that document is 
astonishingly great on this side the water. For one, 
I hope Great Britain will take such steps as may lead 
to a final, peaceful settlement of the whole matter on 
an equitable basis. Such, I think, is the desire and I 
may say, the hope, of a great majority: but so sure as 
Great Britain continues in the same tone of unreason- 
able demand, the country will with great unanimity, 
nerve itself for the crisis. One of the oddities is, that 
John Quincy Adams is vehement for insisting upon 
54° 40', and openly declares, he would not yield to 
Britain a foot of land on what he calls the South Seas. 

"Meantime the Whig press, in their zeal to counter- 
act the almost unanimous approval of the President's 
course, is busy in raising apprehensions of sudden war, 



282 GEORGE BANCROFT [1845-1846 

as though England would strike in the moment of 
excitement. ..." 



To Louis McLane. 

"Washington, March 29, 1846. 

"... Our affairs with Mexico appear to be going on 
very well. We have a great naval force at Mazatlan, 
from which our dates come down to Feb. 11. Were 
Mexico to venture on war, every port from San Fran- 
cisco to Acapulco lies open to our ships. In the Gulf 
of Mexico we have a still larger force; and our little 
army of occupation is advancing to the Del Norte. No 
resistance is apprehended ; and in Mexico itself a better 
spirit toward us is prevailing. The people may dislike 
the United States, but they dislike monarchy more; 
and the open suggestions of placing a European prince 
on a throne to be erected there, has created a party in 
favour of peace with the United States. The prospect 
of an adjustment is better than ever. 

"In respect to Oregon, all eyes are turned across the 
Atlantic. The determination to give the 'Notice' is so 
strong, that Calhoun is left almost alone, and has been 
compelled to make personal appeals to his political 
friends to sustain him. The notice will pass and with- 
out a clause indicating a compromise. 

"Shall I tell how the debate has been conducted? 
Mr. Allen began earnestly for 54-40 and no compromise. 
Mr. Crittenden for notice and negotiation; and in this 
is sustained by Clayton. Mr. Colquitt, from Cal- 
houn's wing, (Calhoun being by the force of public 



1845-184G] SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 283 

opinion compelled to change his original ground which 
was opposition to the notice) proposed notice and com- 
promise. This exasperated Benton, who has always 
been for 49. 'What,' said he, 'shall Calhoun have the 
o-lory of leading the Senate to a result?' and he insisted 
on peace between Allen and the friends of the Ad- 
ministration, and Crittenden, Clayton and that branch 
of the whigs. This movement of Benton's will, in 
some form, be successful, and within a fortnight either 
the notice, in a form satisfactory to Benton, will pass 
the Senate, with great unanimity by consent, or the 
House Notice will pass by a small majority. 

"Calhoun is in great distress of mind; and feels 
conscious of errour, with too much pride to confess it. 

"You know the views I expressed to you without 
reserve before you left. I have not changed my view 
a hair's breadth during the whole negotiation. As to 
what would be acceptable here, as far as public opinion 
goes, 49 ceding Quadra and Vancouver's island, and 
ceding for seven or ten years the navigation of the 
Columbia, will be sustained. But that is the limit. 
On the question of permanent navigation of the Co- 
lumbia, many of the Whigs would give way: but the 
country never. Neither can it be of weight to England. 
For do but look at our policy. We keep all our gates 
open. The importations for Montreal come through 
New York freely; there is no duty; transit is free: as 
to the Hudson and Lake Champlain and the New 
York canal, England enjoys the free navigation of 
them all, as a voluntary act of our legislation. This 
administration further proposes to let Montreal export 



284 GEORGE BANCROFT [1845-1846 

by way of New York. Why should England stipu- 
late by a treaty for a free transit, which she will have 
from our own policy? For one, I am convinced, 
America should not surrender the free navigation, 
and that England has no motive to press a demand 
for it. 

''Congress is beginning to wake up, on the subject of 
defences. But I do not believe that much will be done. 
The tone of the President's last message, will, I think, 
strike you as very good. The effect here has been 
excellent. . . . 

"The universal opinion here is, that our country is 
not to make an offer. Since the President offered 49, 
England has offered nothing. As far as the record 
appears, she plants herself in the Columbia River. 
Many private rumours suggest that England is willing 
to recede; I have had one letter that admits no other 
inference; but she has not said so. It seems but the 
dictate of common sense, that England, if she disap- 
proves the rejection of our offer by Pakenham, should 
herself renew a proposition. If she doesn't, we shall 
undoubtedly go forward and colonise the Pacific coast 
without further ado. If she makes the offer that 
there is some reason to anticipate, the arrangement will 
be confirmed by every Senator excepting twelve or 
eight. . . . 

"[P. S.] That the repeal of the corn-laws is the 
commencement of a political reform in England, 
appears to me too clear to admit of a doubt. The 
corn-laws formed the central point of their old aris- 
tocracy." 



1845-1S46] SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 285 

To Louis McLane. 

"Washington, June 23, 1846. 
"... Others will write you. Gen. Armstrong will 
take to you the chief topics of conversation, and public 
interest. I beg leave to express to you the very great 
satisfaction felt here in all quarters, at the able, digni- 
fied and successful manner in which you have carried 
on your part of the late negotiations, which, in their 
importance, are not surpassed by any of the last thirty 
years of our history. Those who have read your let- 
ters are unanimous in this opinion, and those who have 
not, award to you applause on just grounds of faith. 
The conduct of the President throughout has been 
calm, wise, and resolute. It took three or four days to 
get the proposition to refer the treaty to the Senate 
adopted with absolute unanimity as to the measure and 
the form of language. But unanimity in the cabinet 
was obtained, and in the country the satisfaction is 
greater than I can easily express to you. The few who 
make a clamour, excite no attention, and are met by the 
public with rebuke or with indifference. Gen. Cass is 
considerably chagrined, he having met with less sym- 
pathy than was expected, and having got more inti- 
mately connected with the Fifty Four forties than he had 
designed. Mr. Buchanan, who was rumoured to have 
been opposed to his colleagues, has publicly authorised 
a denial of it, and his friends jusdy assert, that the 
form adopted for the President's message to the Senate, 
met his entire approbation. He goes upon the bench 
to fill the vacancy in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey 



286 GEORGE BANCROFT [1845-1846 

circuit.* But of this the pubHc is as yet uninformed. 
The President, I think, will meet with a little difficulty 
in filling your place, exactly to his mind. A most re- 
spectable selection from the north can be made; but I 
doubt, if the person in view, who is a most worthy and 
honourable man, will feel at liberty to leave the country 
at this time. Nor will it be easy to satisfy all in the 
selection for France. But neither of these presses on 
present attention so much as the post of Premier; in 
the filling of which I hope you will be taken to counsel. 
Rumour has been sending the Secretary of the Navy to 
shiver in the swamps of Petersburg; but there is no 
truth in that. It may be that Mr. Charles J. Ingersoll 
has been thought of for that post; at least before his 
controversy about Webster, in the latter part of which 
he is generally thought not to have had the best of it. 
Yet his talents, his activity, and the friendly expression 
which preceded his personal quarrel, and the fidelity 
of the Democratic party to its friends, all may unite in 
designating him still for a foreign post. 
"Very faithfully yours 
* "George Bancroft. 

[P. S.] "For your edification, I send you the first 
newspaper printed at Matamoras. I hope the Levant 
is now in the harbor of Monterey, and the Warren at 
San Francisco. Our people consider California and 
New Mexico as ours. They will not easily consent to 
give them up. Mexico is in a state of disintegration, 

•Buchanan, on the contrary, remained Secretary of State 
through Polk's 'administration; then he retired from pubhc hfe 
until Pierce appointed him minister to England in 1853. 



1845-1846] SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 287 

which may render it necessary, in the pursuit of peace, 
to deal with her, province by province, state by state." 

Bancroft's personal relation to the Mexican war and 
its conduct is a matter both of private and of public 
record. On the event which led to it, the annexation 
of Texas, his political opinion was defined before he 
was called to the national councils. The Boston Times, 
of March 13, 1845, rejoicing in its editorial column 
at Bancroft's appointment to the Cabinet, recalled his 
advocacy of annexation at a time when other mem- 
bers of a democratic convention at Worcester thought 
it would be fatal to the party in Massachusetts. "We 
were present," said the writer, "and well recollect the 
occasion, and the intenseness of feeling manifested. 
The subject had not then recommended itself to our 
democracy so much as could have been desired. Mr. 
Bancroft took the floor, and with a depth of reasoning, 
power of grasp, and felicity of illustration, explained 
the bearings of annexation on our social, political and 
commercial interests. His eloquence flowed like a 
clear-running stream, and the cogency of his arguments 
carried conviction to every mind. He pleaded, to use 
his own beautiful figure, for the extension of the 'area 
of freedom,' and he was successful. Those views were 
subsequently incorporated in the letter which he ad- 
dressed to the democracy on accepting the nomination 
for Governor, and its tenor is well and favourably 
known throughout the Union." 

When he joined the Cabinet his view of the Mexican 
situation was summed up in a letter to a correspondent 



288 GEORGE BANCROFT [1845-1846 

in New York: "You are quite right in supposing the 
disposition of this government towards Mexico to be 
of the most conciHatory character. ... I hope war is 
permanently out of fashion in the civihsed world; but 
at least I hope and trust that that savage custom is 
not to intrude itself into the relations of American 
republics with each other." ^ 

Less than a week after writing this letter Bancroft 
found himself, by the President's order of May 31, 1845, 
Acting Secretary of War during a temporary absence of 
Secretary Marcy. On May 28th Marcy had written to 
General Zachary Taylor, at Fort Jesup, Louisiana, a 
letter preparing him for an important communication 
which Bancroft was destined to write. This was no 
less than an order ^ (June 15, 1845) — anticipating the 
action of Texas which should make it a State of the 
Union — to make a forward movement to the western 
frontier of Texas, with a view to occupying a site "best 
adapted to repel invasion, and to protect what, in the 
event of annexation, will be our western border. You 
will limit yourself," the order continued, "to the de- 
fence of the territory of Texas, unless Mexico should 
declare war against the United States." As the Mex- 
icans still cons dered the territory into which Taylor 
advanced a part of Mexico, it was this "forward move- 
ment," ordered by Bancroft as the temporary head of 
the War Department, which precipitated the Mexican 
war. 

1 To Henry Wikoff, May 12, 1845. 

* See Executive Documents, Ist Session, 30th Congress, No. 60, 
p. 81. 



1845-1846] SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 289 

Two passages from letters of December 10, 1845, 
are illuminative. To Commodore Perry Bancroft 
wrote: "We are jogging on quietly this winter, not 
anticipating war. Yet it may come when least ex- 
pected. In that event; I am glad to believe our navy 
has officers capable of maintaining its glory as it was 
in its best days." On the same day he wrote to Com- 
modore Conner at Pensacola: *'We all hope Mexico 
will agree to a peace : and we are all well satisfied with 
the prudence and good judgment with which you have 
conducted your affairs. Pray keep the vessels so that 
we can constantly hear from Mr. Slidell without in- 
terruption." 

When President Polk received the news of the con- 
flict between American and Mexican arms which led 
him to recommend a declaration of war, Bancroft was 
the only member of his Cabinet who had not supported 
his determination upon this course. Yet the actual 
recommendation was made, May 11, 1846, with the 
concurrence of all the Cabinet.* Congress immediately 
recognised the existence of war with Mexico, and it 
fell to the Secretary of the Navy to issue the order 
which rendered operative one of the worst mistakes 
of judgment made by the Polk administration. On 
May 13th Bancroft wrote to Commodore Conner: 
"If Santa Anna endeavours to enter the Mexican 
ports you will allow him to pass freely." ^ When the 

• See The American Nation: A Histonj. Vol. XVII. "West- 
ward Expansion," by George Pierce Garrison, pp. 204-205. 

2 Executive Documents 1st Session, 30th Congress, No. GO, p. 
774. See also, Von Hoist, III., 281. 



290 GEORGE BANCROFT [1845-1846 

exile did return from Havana, it was not, as the 
Washington administration hoped, to bring peace 
nearer, but to raise fresh obstacles of warfare and 
bloodshed. 

In achieving the most important result of the Mex- 
ican war, the acquisition of California, the navy played 
of necessity a leading role. The series of orders issued 
by Bancroft to Commodore Sloat, commanding our 
ships in the Pacific, may be followed by the student of 
the conflict. They reveal the Secretary clearly fore- 
seeing the possibility of war, directing the policy and 
actions of the commander in the event of its outbreak, 
and when it came, urging upon him more activity than 
he showed in the carrying out of his instructions. In 
fulfilment of these orders Monterey, San Francisco and 
other California towns were taken, though too slowly 
to satisfy the Washington authorities.^ 

From Bancroft's private letters during the progress 
of these events, three extracts may be made. On June 
16, 1846, he wrote to Samuel Hooper of Boston: "From 
the best judgment I can form. Commodore Sloat could 
not have heard of hostilities before May 17, perhaps 
not so soon. Within three weeks after that, our flag 
ought to have been flying at Monterey and San Fran- 
cisco. ... I hope California is now in our possession, 
never to be given up. We were driven reluctantly to 
war; we must make a solid peace; that shall open the 

'See H. H. Bancroft, California, Vol. V., Chaps, ix. and x.; 
Westward Expansion, Garrison, 232, 233, and George Bancroft and 
his Services to California, Memorial Address, delivered May 12, 
1891, before the California Historical Society, by Theodore H. 
Hittell. 



1845-1846] SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 291 

far west to religious freedom, political rights, schools, 
commerce and industry. The time will come when you 
may pass on railroads and steamers from Boston to 
San Francisco." To the same correspondent he wrote, 
June 22d: "If Mexico makes peace this month the 
Rio del Norte and the parallel of 35° may do as a 
boundary; after that 32° which will include San Diego." 

On August 22, 1846, he wrote to Daniel Webster: 
"We have a great deal of news from Mexico today; 
Bravo is unwilling to act as President; Paredes delays 
going north; the army sent to reduce the insurgents in 
the Province of Jalisco defeated and its general slain; 
the province of Vera Cruz in revolt; the Federalists 
unwilling to receive Santa Anna; the most sensible 
people in Mexico desirous of peace. I hope we shall 
have it soon." 

When this was written Bancroft's retirement from the 
Navy Department was near at hand, and for more than 
a year the war was to continue. In its conduct by 
Polk and his Cabinet, Bancroft's course was that of a 
faithful member of the official family. His part in 
directing a war so distasteful to his native New England 
added nothing to his popularity there. But his aim 
was to be rather a national than a New England states- 
man. It was his own feeling in later life that he had 
never received enough credit for the part he played in 
adding California to the Union. ^ 

On September 9, 1846, Bancroft ceased to be Secre- 
tary of the Navy. His administration of the depart- 

' Notes of conversation with Prof. W. M. Sloane, November, 
1905. 



292 GEORGE BANCROFT [1845-1846 

ment had not been wholly popular in the service itself, 
and in the last month of his holding office the Senate 
had rebuffed him by failing to confirm some nomina- 
tions of his making. The following extract from the 
New York Evening Post, immediately after his retire- 
ment, suggests at once the grounds of opposition to 
him and the merits of his official course: 

"Mr. Bancroft has retired from the office of Secretary 
of the Navy to be the representative of the nation at the 
Court of England. Wliile Secretary he had many op- 
ponents, and there are very many unable to appreciate 
what he recommended to be done for the navy. He 
seems to have viewed the navy as belonging to the 
country, and not to any one grade of officers in it; and 
under this view he wisely urged that promotions should 
not be made solely by seniority, but a careful dis- 
crimination should be had as to capability. Where 
within his power, his appointments to command and 
to subordinate places were made with reference to the 
fitness of the individual, with little regard to the age 
of his commission. The effect of such principles were 
to stimulate all to deserve the approbation of the Secre- 
tary, and cause the work given them for execution to be 
better done. Let not these broad principles be too 
lightly laid aside. Consider the interests of the ser- 
vants of the people, but do not forget those of the 
people themselves." 

The preference of Bancroft for a diplomatic post in 
which he could press forward his historical labours has 
been made clear at the beginning of this chapter. 



1845-1846] SECRETARY OF THE NAVY 293 

From the diary of Polk ' we learn that after it was ar- 
ranged to give him the French mission in the spring 
of 1847 he chose the English, in which McLane had 
already remained longer than he wished— so that Ban- 
croft had to assume its duties in the autumn of 1846. 
Thus, at the age of forty-six, he came to the mission 
which he had urged, not many months before, upon 
an ex-president. His devotion to the work upon his 
History even throughout the busiest days of transition 
from one high official employment to another may be 
inferred from the following extract from a letter to his 
wife written while he was travelling from Washington 
to Boston. It is postmarked Albany, and dated Sep- 
tember 30, 1846: "I go this morning to Kinderhook, 
and tomorrow morning to Springfield. Friday last I 
was at Monmouth. Saturday was given to the bat- 
tleground of Long Island, Sunday and Monday to 
Washington's movements at the retreat, and to Forts 
Stony Point, Clinton and ^lontgomery, Andre's affairs, 
etc. Yesterday I went over the battleground of Bur- 
goyne. To do this I have worked hard, and have been 
obliged to pass the nights in travel." 

It would not be fair, however, to leave as the last 
impression of Bancroft's public service at home the 
idea that his private concerns were paramount with him. 
Loyalty to superiors in office is at least one indication 
of the quality of one's service. Of Bancroft's loyalty 
to Polk there is a striking expression. More than 
forty years after the closest association of the two men 
> Quoted in unpublished monograph on Polk's Cabinet by 
Miss Mary L. Hinsdale. 



294 GEORGE BANCROFT [1845-1846 

came to an end, Bancroft had occasion to examine care- 
fully the personal papers of his chief. Far from agree- 
ing with Lowell that half "The Masses" had been per- 
suaded 

" by way of a joke 
That Washinton's mantelpiece fell upon Polk," 

Bancroft wrote, August 30, 1887, to his friend, Col. J. 
G. Harris of Nashville: "I safely received and have 
worked away very industriously and thoroughly on 
Polk's papers. His character shines out in them just 
exactly as the man he was, prudent, far-sighted, bold, 
excelling any democrat of his day in undeviatingly cor- 
rect exposition of the democratic principles; and, in 
short, as I think, judging of him as I knew him, and 
judging of him by the results of his administration, one 
of the very foremost of our public men and one of the 
very best and most honest and most successful Presi- 
dents the country ever had." 



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